From Startup to Scale: A Founder's Guide to Technical Decisions

The Startup Dilemma

As a startup founder, every technical decision feels critical. Should you build custom authentication or use Auth0? Build your own payment processing or integrate Stripe? These early choices can make or break your startup's ability to scale.

Build vs Buy Framework

Here's our framework for making these decisions:

Build When:

• It's your core differentiator: If the feature is what makes your product unique, build it
• No good solutions exist: If existing solutions don't meet your needs, build custom
• You have domain expertise: If you understand the problem deeply, building might be faster
• Cost is prohibitive: If SaaS costs scale poorly with your business model

Buy When:

• It's not core to your business: Authentication, payments, email — buy these
• Time to market matters: Using Stripe gets you payments in days, not months
• Compliance is complex: PCI-DSS, HIPAA — let experts handle it
• Maintenance burden is high: Security updates, bug fixes — SaaS handles this

Real Examples

Case 1: Authentication

Decision: Buy (Auth0/Clerk)

Why: Authentication is complex (OAuth, SAML, MFA, password reset, email verification). Building it takes months and introduces security risks. Auth0 handles all of this for $23/month.

When to reconsider: If you need custom authentication flows that no provider supports, or if costs become prohibitive at scale.

Case 2: Payment Processing

Decision: Buy (Stripe/PayPal)

Why: PCI-DSS compliance is expensive and complex. Stripe handles compliance, fraud detection, and supports 40+ countries. You can't build this in-house cost-effectively.

When to reconsider: If you're processing $10M+ monthly and can negotiate better rates, or if you need payment methods Stripe doesn't support.

Case 3: Core Algorithm

Decision: Build

Why: If your core value proposition is a unique algorithm or matching system, this is your competitive advantage. You need full control and customization.

Example: A marketplace that matches service providers with customers using proprietary ML algorithms.

When to Migrate

As you scale, you'll need to revisit early decisions:

• Cost: When SaaS costs exceed building cost (usually at $50K+/month)
• Limitations: When the service limits your growth or feature development
• Control: When you need customization that the service doesn't support
• Reliability: When the service becomes a bottleneck or single point of failure

Common Mistakes

• Over-engineering: Building complex systems before validating the need
• Under-engineering: Using quick fixes that become technical debt
• Vendor lock-in: Not planning for migration when choosing SaaS
• Premature optimization: Building for scale before you have users

Our Recommendation

Start with SaaS for non-core features. Focus your engineering resources on what makes your product unique. As you scale and understand your needs better, you can migrate to custom solutions when it makes financial and technical sense.

Remember: The best technical decision is the one that gets you to market fastest while maintaining flexibility for the future.