Build vs. Buy in the Age of Vibe Coding

Vibe coding tools collapsed the cost of building software. That is both good and dangerous. Good, because you can prototype almost anything in an afternoon. Dangerous, because we built it is no longer a moat. If you can spin it up that fast, so can your competitor.

Rent the engine, own the road

Buy the commodity. The model, the infrastructure, the hosting. These are maintained better and cheaper by vendors than you will ever do in-house. Build the proprietary. Your data, your workflow, the specific thing that compounds and that nobody else can copy because it grew out of your business.

The mistake founders make is building the commodity and renting the moat. Flip it. Spend your scarce engineering hours on the thing that is yours, and let the labs carry the parts that are everyone's.