Building vs buying solutions

In all sectors, companies have traditionally been fixated on their own boundaries. That's why retailers didn't see a threat in Amazon because they were "only" online. Publishers played down blogs becaus

e they were "only" online, and Netflix and YouTube were dismissed as "only" online media. Now, look what happened. And the same is happening across all industries again, thanks to the phenomenon that is IoT. However, companies at all stages jump on the boat, often with little knowledge in the relevant verticals or lacking expertise and resources. 

I am using the example of IoT again because it's very "now". The clock is ticking for many at this time, as innovators, entrepreneurs and conglomerates alike, rush for a quick market entry with new technology, looking for old problems for their cutting edge solutions. Today's episode is all about buying vs. building. While, there are various upsides to both buying and building a new IoT product, it all comes down to the business case for your Company. If you build any new IoT product from scratch your design team gets creative control and the experience of building something from nothing. The trade-off is that it’s a slow, sometimes painful, and often a expensive process. You have to iterate and learn as you go and learning is expensive. Counting in design, tooling, manufacturing, and test marketing, a typical IoT product like a Smart Locator or Bluetooth Finding Tag and Apps like the one we built with Xupo costs can easily be in the 7 figures - capital that could have been to good use elsewhere. While creative control is great, it comes with extra work, requires extra patience from your team and especially comes at an added price tag. In acquiring a start-up (or competitor) or a license to its technology for a similar solution, you may sacrifice the original creative control and the founder/starter’s experience but you can get a revenue stream fast - a lot faster whilst benefiting from the knowledge exchange. Compared to building, buying a company is less risky because you have managed to de-risk the heavy up front R&D capital for a quicker income stream and more importantly save one of your key asset - Time. So you can find the time for the things that truly matter for your business. When looking at the Xupo IoT Platform, we have a 4-year-matured modular stack that can easily be applied for your security, safety, tracking, location, or proximity applications. Based on a Bluetooth 5-ready system, you'd get state of the art high-speed, low power, high data and long-range solutions. Ranging from remote control to personal alarm applications, you can build on Xupo to get to market faster and more efficiently than otherwise thinkable.

Based on our product and market experience we helped others build their MVPs more efficiently and it's advised to give this a thought, which of course can be in any market.