Use existing solutions over building your own to stay focused on shipping product
Put pride aside and use battle-tested external services for non-core functionality. The goal is getting product to users, not perfecting infrastructure. Engineering time is too valuable at early stage to spend on solved problems.
When to use
When considering whether to build or buy for non-core functionality like monitoring, notifications, or analytics.
Don't do this
Spending days or weeks building custom solutions for problems that existing services solve well enough.
3 Founders Who Did This
Used Supabase for database and authentication instead of building custom solutions, used Vercel for hosting instead of managing own servers
Non-technical founder used WordPress Multisite as SaaS foundation, built MVP for 4,000 GBP in 3 months. Technical experts would have said it could not scale, but naivety kept him focused on outcome over implementation.
Used Gumroad for subscription management and native email workflows, folio.com for simple HTML landing page, and Crisp.chat for website communication. Chose existing solutions over building custom infrastructure.