Build or buy

Every capability a business needs can be built or bought. The decision between them is one of the most consequential a leader makes and one of the least examined.

Building is the default. It feels safer because it is familiar. The process is understood, the cost is spread over time and the result is entirely within the organisation's control. Building also takes time. It requires the right people, the right knowledge and the right conditions to produce the right result. When those are available and the timeline allows, building is often the right answer.

When they are not, building is the expensive answer dressed as the cautious one.

The market does not wait for the business that is building what it could have bought. The competitor that acquired the capability last year is already using it. The customer who needed it last quarter has already found someone who had it. The window that was open while the build was in progress has closed by the time the build is complete.

Buying accelerates. It brings in capability that already exists, knowledge that has already been tested, mistakes that have already been made and paid for. The business that buys a capability it needs does not start from zero. It starts from wherever the acquired business already is. That distance, between zero and wherever the startup already is, is what the acquisition is paying for. Not the product alone. The journey that produced it.

The decision is not build or buy as a matter of preference. It is build or buy as a matter of timing, cost and strategic position. Ask one question. Can we build this in the time the market gives us, at a cost the business can absorb, without taking our attention away from what only we can do? If the answer is yes, build. If the answer is no, buy.

Key Takeaway: Build when the time, cost and conditions are right. Buy when they are not. The decision is strategic, not philosophical. The business that defaults to building without asking the question pays for the preference in time and position it cannot recover.

Build when you can. Buy when the market will not wait.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 7: Invest by Acquisition · Section: Build or buy

MarvinPro | December 2025

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What you are actually buying

The product is the visible part of the acquisition. It is rarely the most valuable part.

When a business acquires a startup it is buying several things simultaneously. The product or technology, yes. But also the team that built it, who understand it at a level that no documentation can transfer and no new hire can replicate quickly. The knowledge accumulated through the process of building it, including the dead ends, the failed versions and the decisions that were made under pressure and turned out to be right. The time already spent, which cannot be bought any other way. And the mistakes already made, which the acquiring business now does not have to make itself.

This changes how acquisitions should be evaluated. The startup with a product that is eighty percent of what is needed but a team that is exceptional is often a better acquisition than the startup with a product that is exactly what is needed but a team that will not stay. The product can be completed. The team cannot be reconstructed.

It also changes how acquisitions should be handled after they close. The value of what was bought walks in every morning and can walk out at any time. The team that built the product knows what the product is capable of, where its limits are and what it would take to make it into what the acquiring business needs. Losing that team in the months after the acquisition is not losing employees. It is losing the acquisition.

Know what you are buying before you buy it. Value the team, the knowledge and the time as carefully as you value the product.

Key Takeaway: The product is the visible part of an acquisition. The team, the accumulated knowledge and the time already spent are often worth more. Evaluate all of it. Protect all of it after the deal closes. The acquisition that loses its team loses most of what it paid for.

You are not buying the product. You are buying the journey that produced it.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 7: Invest by Acquisition · Section: What you are actually buying

MarvinPro | December 2025

marvinpro.com

The small acquisition

Acquisition is not only available to large businesses with large budgets. The logic applies at every scale.

The small manufacturer that buys its most critical supplier does not eliminate a cost. It eliminates a dependency. The business that was previously subject to the supplier's pricing, the supplier's capacity and the supplier's priorities now controls all three. The acquisition may be modest in financial terms. The strategic change is significant.

The service business that acquires a small partner it has been referring work to does not just add revenue. It adds capability, client relationships and knowledge that would have taken years to develop independently. The event business that formalises a partnership with a talent agency, bringing the relationship inside rather than depending on it from outside, changes its position in the market without changing its size.

At every scale the question is the same. What are we dependent on that we could own? What capability are we paying for externally that we could bring inside? What relationship are we managing at arm's length that would be stronger and more reliable if it were part of what we are building?

The answer is not always acquisition. Sometimes the dependency is fine, the external relationship is better left external and the capability is not core enough to justify bringing in. But the question should always be asked. The leader who never asks it remains dependent on things that could have been owned, at a cost that compounds every year the dependency continues.

Key Takeaway: The acquisition logic applies at every scale. The question is not whether the business is large enough to acquire. It is whether the dependency, the capability or the relationship is important enough to own. Ask the question at every scale. The answer will sometimes be yes.

You do not need to be large to acquire. You need to see what you are depending on that you could own.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 7: Invest by Acquisition · Section: The small acquisition

MarvinPro | December 2025

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What to look for

Not every acquisition that looks right is right. The ones that fail usually fail for reasons that were visible before the deal closed.

Look for fit before everything else. Not fit in the sense that the two businesses are similar. Fit in the sense that what the acquired business does addresses something the acquiring business genuinely needs, that the gap being filled is real and that the acquisition closes it rather than adding complexity alongside it.

Look at the team honestly. Are the key people planning to stay? What would make them leave? What would make them stay longer than they planned? The acquisition that depends on people who are already thinking about what comes next for them personally is an acquisition with a clock running from the moment it closes.

Look at the culture. A small business acquired by a larger one enters an environment that operates differently, moves at a different pace and makes decisions through different structures. The startup that thrives on speed and autonomy inside a larger organisation that moves slowly and approves everything through committees will not thrive for long. The culture gap is not a soft consideration. It is the most common reason acquisitions that look good on paper produce disappointing results in practice.

Look at the timing. The startup that is too early has not yet proven what it is. The startup that is too late has already reached its ceiling and is being sold because the founders can see it. The right acquisition is the one that has proven enough to be evaluated clearly and has enough runway remaining to become what the acquiring business needs it to become.

Key Takeaway: Fit, team, culture and timing are the four variables that determine whether an acquisition succeeds. The financial case is necessary but not sufficient. The acquisitions that fail almost always fail because one of these four was not examined honestly before the deal closed.

The due diligence that matters most is not in the numbers. It is in the people and the culture.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 7: Invest by Acquisition · Section: What to look for

MarvinPro | December 2025

marvinpro.com

The integration

Buying the business is the easy part. Making it part of what you are building is where acquisitions succeed or fail.

The acquired business arrives with its own way of working, its own culture, its own internal language and its own understanding of what it is and what it is for. None of that disappears because the ownership has changed. It continues, either integrated deliberately into what the acquiring business is building or preserved in isolation until it gradually disconnects from both what it was and what it was supposed to become.

Integration does not mean absorption. The startup that is acquired and immediately made to operate exactly like every other part of the acquiring business loses the qualities that made it worth acquiring. The speed, the culture, the way decisions are made, the closeness of the team to the product, these are not inefficiencies to be corrected. They are assets to be protected while the integration finds the right level of connection between the two.

The leader responsible for the integration must answer one question clearly before it begins. What do we want this to become, and what needs to stay intact for it to get there? The answer to that question determines what is changed, what is preserved and at what pace the integration moves.

Communicate directly and early with the acquired team. They do not know what the acquisition means for them individually. The uncertainty that comes with not knowing is more damaging than almost any answer the acquiring business could give. Tell them what is changing. Tell them what is not. Tell them what is not yet decided and when it will be. Do not let the silence fill with assumptions that are harder to correct than the truth would have been to deliver.

Key Takeaway: Integration is where the value of the acquisition is either realised or lost. Move deliberately. Protect what made the acquisition worth making. Communicate early and clearly with the people whose knowledge and capability the acquisition was made to secure.

The acquisition is made on the day of the deal. The value is made in the integration.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 7: Invest by Acquisition · Section: The integration

MarvinPro | December 2025

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A real example

A business in the middle of rebuilding its product line after a difficult period. The capability needed to complete the next generation of products existed in small companies that had been building in adjacent spaces, teams of engineers and designers who had solved specific problems that the larger business needed solved at scale and quickly.

The acquisitions were not large. They were precise. Each one brought in a specific capability, a specific team and a specific body of work that the acquiring business would have taken years to develop independently. The music management software that became the foundation of a product that defined a category. The graphics tools that accelerated the development of the operating system being rebuilt from the ground up. The smaller acquisitions that never became visible to the outside world but contributed directly to products that did.

In each case what was bought was not just the software. It was the team that understood the software at a level that could not be documented or transferred through hiring alone. The engineers who had built the thing knew what it could do and what it could not, where its limits were and what it would take to push past them. That knowledge arrived with the acquisition. It could not have been acquired any other way in the time available.

The pattern across these acquisitions was consistent. Small, targeted, capability-focused. Each one filling a specific gap in the product roadmap. Each one bringing people who stayed and contributed directly to what the business became. The products that resulted were not built entirely from within. They were built on a foundation that had been bought precisely because building it would have taken too long.

The business that emerged from that period was not the same business that entered it. The acquisitions were part of the reason.

Buy the capability you cannot build in time. Then build on top of it.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 7: Invest by Acquisition · A real example

MarvinPro | December 2025

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Chapter Outcome

Build when the time, cost and conditions are right. Buy when the market will not wait for you to build.

Know what you are buying. The product is visible. The team, the knowledge and the time already spent are worth as much or more. Evaluate all of it. Protect all of it after the deal closes.

Ask the acquisition question at every scale. You do not need to be large to acquire. You need to see what you are depending on that you could own, what capability you are paying for externally that belongs inside, what relationship managed at arm's length would be stronger if it were part of what you are building.

Look at fit, team, culture and timing before you look at the financial case. The acquisitions that fail almost always fail because one of these was not examined honestly enough before the deal closed.

Integrate deliberately. Protect what made the acquisition worth making. Communicate early and clearly with the people the acquisition was made to secure. The value is made in the integration, not in the deal.

The business that only builds what it needs grows at the pace of its own capacity. The business that also buys what it needs grows at the pace the market requires.

Build what you can. Buy what you cannot build in time. Integrate what you buy with the care it took to build.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 7: Invest by Acquisition · Chapter Outcome

MarvinPro | December 2025

marvinpro.com