12/04/2025
Should You Build or Buy?
Every serious agency hits the same fork in the road sooner or later.
Do we just buy another AI platform and hand out logins?
Or
Do we bite the bullet and build something inside our own stack that actually works the way we do?
Both paths can work, as well as be a waste.
So the real question isn’t “Which tool is better?”
It’s: What are you actually trying to scale?
SaaS platforms are incentivised to scale seats.
You pay per user. Everyone gets the same generic engine. Your team can produce more content, more drafts, more “stuff” faster. That’s great if your main goal is general leverage and “good enough” output.
Internal systems scale judgment.
You’re not just giving people an AI sandbox. You’re wiring your own playbook, client history, voice, and standards into flows that sit inside how you already deliver work.
A new brief doesn’t hit a blank page.
It hits a system that already knows your format, your questions, your style, and what “good” has looked like for this client before. Your team still makes the calls. They just start from 80% instead of 0%.
Here's the real split:
SaaS mostly multiplies how many people can hit “generate.”
Internal systems mostly multiply how your best people think.
If your edge is hustle and basic fulfillment, scaling seats on a good platform will get you plenty of mileage.
If your edge is your team’s taste, judgment, and the way you solve problems for clients, then the bottleneck isn’t logins. It’s scaling that way of thinking.
So the question for a founder isn’t “Which AI tool should we try next?” It’s:
When your agency is 2x bigger, do you want to have scaled headcount on off-shelf tools,
