Lenny Distilled

Build and buy beats build or buy

Execution → Technical Tradeoffs

When the open source models say like, 'build me a website,' it actually installs WordPress, and then builds on top of that, and then customizes on top of that. Then you get for free that core engine that's always being audited and updated.

Matt MullenwegThe one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

It's not just build versus buy. It's build and buy now. So you buy the tool to get 90% of the way there and then you build the cool thing on top with the other 10%. And that's how you actually have a lot of velocity.

Austin HayThe ultimate guide to Martech
Supporting

We try to be very pragmatic about the place that we're going to do this work, and we don't want to reinvent the wheel. And so starting from the very best pre-trained models that exist out there, often open source ones.

Michael TruellThe rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can't stop using