Build vs Buy
The spreadsheet comparison misses the real cost
Looking at a platform invoice last month. $10 per seat. 2,000 employees. $240k/year.
Half the features we never touch. The modules for our Philippines and LATAM teams are thin or missing entirely. We’re paying for a platform built for US-centric problems.
$240k is roughly one senior engineer, fully loaded. Add some infra costs, call it $280k. A dedicated person who understands our actual needs versus a generic platform.
So just build it, right?
Core vs Context
Geoffrey Moore’s framework is useful here. Core is what differentiates you. Context is everything else.
This platform isn’t core for us. That engineer building bespoke tooling could be working on the product instead.
This is the part the salary-vs-SaaS spreadsheet misses. You’re not comparing $240k to $280k. You’re comparing $240k to whatever that engineer would’ve shipped on core.
The Friction Tax
SaaS vendors build for the median customer. You get features you don’t need. You’re missing features for your edge cases. Customization means professional services or internal teams handling it more slowly.
When the tool doesn’t fit, people work around it. They track things in spreadsheets. They develop manual processes. And once that happens, the tool stops being the source of truth. Nobody trusts it has full context anymore.
Now you have two systems: the official one and the real one. The team drifts further from the platform. The gap widens.
At some point it breaks. The friction of using an ill-fitting tool exceeds the cost of building yourself.
Where We Landed
We’re fixing it with people and process first. Tightening up workflows, assigning clear ownership, accepting that the tool is partial.
This is a stepping stone. Once the process is clear and the friction is mapped, we’ll likely build it ourselves. Vibe code the replacement, then engineering secures and deploys.
Not there yet. But the path is visible now.
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