You're sitting in a boardroom. Or maybe a Slack huddle. The problem is always the same: we need a specific capability, and we need it yesterday. Someone suggests building it from scratch because "we’re special." Someone else wants to sign a massive enterprise contract for a tool that does 90% of what we don't need. This is the heart of build borrow buy exploring options for your world, a framework that sounds simple on a whiteboard but feels like a nightmare in practice.
Most people treat this like a shopping trip. It's not. It's a resource allocation puzzle that determines if your company survives the next eighteen months or drowns in technical debt and "shelfware."
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The Real Cost of Building Everything Yourself
Software engineers love to build things. I get it. There is a certain pride in crafting a bespoke solution that fits your specific workflow like a glove. But honestly, most of the time, building is a trap. You aren't just paying for the initial development; you're signing up for a lifetime of maintenance, security patches, and the inevitable "bus factor" where only one person knows how the code works.
Take a look at companies like Netflix. They are the poster children for building. They built Titus for container orchestration and Spinnaker for delivery. But they only did that because the market literally didn't have what they needed at that scale. If you aren't operating at global streaming volume, you probably don't need to build your own cloud infrastructure management tools.
When you choose to build, you are betting that your internal team can do it better, faster, or cheaper than the entire global market. That is a massive ego play. It’s usually better to reserve that "build" energy for your actual product—the thing people pay you for—rather than internal tooling or commodity features.
Borrowing: The Middle Ground Nobody Understands
When we talk about build borrow buy exploring options for your world, the "borrow" part is usually the most misunderstood. People think it means renting equipment. In a modern business context, borrowing is about partnerships, licensing, or open-source ecosystems.
You aren't owning the asset. You're leveraging someone else's IP to get to market faster.
Think about how Starbucks handled their mobile payments early on. They didn't try to become a bank immediately. They partnered. They borrowed the underlying financial infrastructure of processors and focused on the user experience. Open source is the ultimate "borrow" move. You use React or Kubernetes. You don't own the roadmap, but you get a massive head start.
The risk? Dependency. If the "lender" changes the terms or stops maintaining the project, you’re stuck. You've built your house on rented land. It’s a trade-off between speed and control. You gain the ability to pivot quickly, but you lose the long-term stability of ownership.
Buying Your Way to the Top
Buying is for when time is your scarcest resource. If a SaaS product exists that solves 80% of your problem, you should probably buy it.
The "buy" option has changed. It used to mean buying a company (M&A). Now, it usually means a high-tier subscription or an outright acquisition of a smaller team to "acq-hire" their talent. Adobe buying Figma (before the regulators stepped in) was a classic "buy" move. They saw a threat and a capability they couldn't replicate fast enough, so they reached for the checkbook.
But buying has its own gremlins.
Integration is a mess.
Cultural debt is real.
I’ve seen dozens of companies buy a tool or a smaller firm only to realize six months later that the "integration" is just two different teams staring at each other in awkward Zoom calls while their data silos remain completely separate. You’re buying their problems along with their solutions.
How to Actually Navigate Build Borrow Buy Exploring Options for Your World
So, how do you decide? You need a rubric that isn't just a 2x2 matrix from a 1990s textbook.
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- Is this your core competency? If the answer is no, do not build it. If you are a shoe company, do not build your own payroll software. Buy it.
- How fast is the market moving? If the tech is changing every six months, borrow. Stay lean. Don't lock yourself into a "buy" contract or a "build" cycle that will be obsolete by the time it ships.
- What is the scarcity? Sometimes you buy because you can't find the talent to build. Talent is a finite resource. If your best devs are working on a "build" project that doesn't move the needle on revenue, you're losing money even if the software is "free."
The Strategic Value of "No"
The hardest part of build borrow buy exploring options for your world is telling your team "no" to their favorite option. Engineers will want to build. Procurement will want to buy. The "borrow" or partnership option often feels too vague for people to get excited about.
Strategic leaders have to look at the "World" part of that phrase. Your "world" is your specific competitive landscape. If your competitors are all buying the same off-the-shelf CRM, maybe that's where you "build" a custom layer to gain an edge. Or, if they are all bogged down in legacy "built" systems, you "buy" a modern cloud solution to outrun them.
Practical Steps for Implementation
Don't just hold a meeting. Run a "pre-mortem."
Imagine you chose to build. It’s two years from now and the project failed. Why? Usually, it's because the lead dev left and no one can read the documentation.
Imagine you bought. It’s two years later and it failed. Why? Probably because the vendor hiked prices by 40% and you're locked in.
Now, look at the borrow option. It failed because the open-source community moved to a different framework and you're left on an island.
When you see the failure points clearly, the right choice for your specific world becomes obvious. You stop chasing the "perfect" solution and start choosing the one with the risks you are actually willing to manage.
- Audit your current stack. Identify one "built" tool that should have been "bought."
- Map your "borrow" dependencies. See which open-source or partner tools are actually "load-bearing" for your business.
- Calculate the 'Maintenance Tax'. For every "build" project, add 20% to the annual cost for upkeep. If it still looks cheaper than buying, go for it.
- Run a pilot. Never "buy" or "build" at scale without a three-month test case using a "borrow" or "freemium" version first.
The goal isn't to find a permanent answer. It's to keep your business fluid enough to adapt when the world changes again.