'We could build this ourselves.' You're technical. You understand systems. You look at $30K/year for mediocre platforms and think 'I could build something better in 3-4 months.' This calculation is right about the prototype. It's wrong about production infrastructure.
What You're Actually Building
The hard parts:
- Data Engineering: Building infrastructure to maintain integrations as APIs change.
- Identity Resolution: Tracking the same person across devices and sessions.
- Attribution Modeling: Data science work, not just an algorithm.
- Maintenance: Security updates, compliance, performance optimization.
The Real Costs Nobody Mentions
Opportunity Cost. Your engineering team building infrastructure means they're not building product features that generate revenue. Expertise Gap. You probably don't have experts in data engineering and attribution modeling in-house. Long-Term Commitment. Once you build it, you own it forever.
"The real question isn't 'can we build this ourselves?' (probably yes). It's 'should we build this ourselves?' (probably no)."
