Build vs. Buy: Why the Best Solutions Involve Both

When developing technology solutions for your business, there's often a tradeoff of "build vs. buy" as part of the evaluation process. However, in reality, most organizations end up with a "build and buy" mindset. Let's take a look why that is with Uber as an example.

Build
Building offers unmatched customization and control. It allows you to design your systems to exactly match your processes, plus give you flexibility (if done correctly) to adapt to future needs.

The downside is that custom solutions are often expensive and time-consuming to develop, and also should require some degree of in-house expertise to validate and maintain it along the way.

For our example, Uber built its rider-driver matching system to meet specific demands and maintain flexibility as the market evolved. This gives it a competitive edge, and let's it adapt that system as their business expands into new markets.

Buy
Buying an existing vendor's system accelerates the implementation process and allows organizations to recognize value sooner. This allows your team to focus on its core strengths or mission instead of spending time on development.

The downside is you may end up outgrowing or evolving beyond what a purchased system can offer, which leads to either augmentation or replacement (or just living with inefficiency, which is not my preferred approach).

For our example, Uber likely leverages Salesforce or Zendesk (probably both, because they "yolo'ed" while growing with cheap capital). Their engineering talent absolutely could have built this from scratch, but vendors already offered comprehensive feature sets.

Build and Buy
Blending these strategies almost always offers the best outcome for organizations, as they are able to realize efficiencies by using prebuilt systems and filling specific gaps with custom solutions.

For our example, Uber used a build and buy mindset when designing their overall systems landscape, and also took that approach to address functionality intrinsic to their business in their CRM and support ticketing systems.

TLDR: Build vs. buy is really build and buy: gain efficiency through buying, and build for the gaps.