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Dear Reader,

Two weeks ago, I built a complete business intelligence tool in one afternoon. Not a prototype, but a fully functional system that scrapes social platforms for monetizable problems, analyzes them with AI, and outputs detailed business opportunities. It’s also something that I had no planned intention of building that day.

The trigger? A fellow developer’s impressive SaaS demo that I was curious enough to use, but at a subscription price I couldn’t justify.

What followed highlights how dramatically AI has changed the build vs. buy calculation for anyone running a business.

The Moment Everything Clicked

I was watching this developer’s demo video, genuinely impressed by their solution. They’d built something that could scan Reddit and other platforms for complaints, then use AI to identify potential business opportunities. A solid concept, slightly half-baked execution, but it was a curious enough concept for me to utilise for one of my projects.

The cost, however, was Yet Another Subscription that I couldn’t justify - but then I had a thought that would have been ridiculous even two years ago: “What if I just… figured out how they approached this and built my own version?”

The New Reality of Competitive Analysis

Here’s what one afternoon of AI-powered reverse engineering looks like in 2025:

First, I visited the product website using Dia - if you’ll remember from past issues, Dia is a new breed of AI-powered browsers currently on the market, allowing users to interact with web pages using an AI. Dia comes with a Skills Marketplace, which is essentially a storefront of pre-fabricated prompts to carry out a task. In this particular case I used a skill called /copycat. copycat “evaluates the website or app in your browser tab and tells you how to build a better version.”

Copycat literally gave me a roadmap on how to potentially build this myself.

Next, I used MacWhisper to grab a transcript of the walkthrough demo, where the the developer had essentially narrated their entire strategic thinking: How they identified the problem, their technical approach, even the specific AI prompts they used. It was like having their internal strategy document.

Finally I needed to put this all into a system that could do some reasonably decent vibe coding - Claude has been my tool of choice for the last month.

Using my outputs from Dia/Copycat and the transcription from MacWhisper, I asked Claude to help create instructions for a Claude Project (yup, physician heal thyself, I know), and I was vibe coding away. No methodical planning or careful architecture - just following the creative energy and building features as inspiration struck, occasionally asking ChatGPT or Perplexity to help with API issues and Python code.

Three hours later (no hyperbole - this literally happened over three hours), I had something that not only matched their core functionality but went significantly beyond it.

What Actually Emerged

The interesting thing about building your own version isn’t that you copy what exists, it’s that you end up solving the problem differently.

Their tool was focused on finding business opportunities from social complaints. Mine evolved into a complete business intelligence pipeline. Where they showed potential problems, mine analyzed entire market segments. Where they provided basic opportunity identification, mine generated market sizing estimates, competitive analysis, and technical implementation roadmaps.

It wasn’t better or worse than theirs - it was different - and more to the point, it was tailored exactly to how I think about the problems of the project I was applying this tool to, and what information I actually needed to make decisions.

The Framework That Changed My Thinking

This experience forced me to completely rethink how I approach the ‘build vs. buy’ decision. The old calculation was simple: building takes weeks or months, buying takes minutes. So unless you had serious technical resources and time, you bought.

AI has flipped that equation. Now the question isn’t “can I build this?” but “should I build this?”

The answer depends on a few key factors. First, is this central to your competitive advantage? Business intelligence tools are core to my consulting work, so building something custom makes strategic sense. If I was a restaurant owner needing point-of-sale software, I’d buy something proven rather than rolling my own. If I’m in a blue-chip company with it’s own developer team, I’d need to consult them first, etc.

Second, can you meaningfully improve on what exists? Their tool was impressive, but I could see clear opportunities for enhancement: deeper market analysis, more data sources, better data export, more comprehensive competitive intelligence. If an existing solution already does exactly what you need, building your own is usually a waste of time.

Third, what’s the real learning value? Understanding how modern social listening combined with AI analysis works has broader applications across my business. The development process taught me techniques I’ll use in other projects.

Finally, there’s the basic math. One focused afternoon versus $x per month for Yet Another Subscription. When you can actually execute on the building part, the economics shift dramatically.

An Uncomfortable Truth About AI & Modern Business

AI has fundamentally changed what’s possible for small businesses and individual operators. Tools that used to require entire development teams can now be built by one person with the right AI assistance.

This creates some challenging realities. For tool creators, technical implementation is no longer a meaningful competitive advantage. The real value is in unique insights, user experience, and market positioning. For businesses, the build vs. buy calculation needs updating when AI can help you create exactly what you need in hours rather than weeks.

But there’s a deeper shift happening here. We’re moving toward a world where the most successful businesses aren’t necessarily those that buy the best tools - they’re the ones that can rapidly create exactly the tools they need.

What This Can Mean for Your Business

Whether you’re running a startup, managing a team at a larger company, or just trying to be more productive in your own work, this trend affects you.

The barriers to custom solutions have largely disappeared. That doesn’t mean you should build everything from scratch, but it does mean you should think differently about what’s possible. When you encounter a business process that existing tools don’t handle quite right, the option to create something tailored to your needs is increasingly realistic.

The key lies in developing competitive analysis skills - or building agents that can systematically do it for you. Learning to extract strategic insights from how others approach problems, then rapidly prototyping solutions that fit your specific situation.

The Bigger Picture

We’re in a transition period where AI has democratized both competitive analysis and rapid solution development. The businesses that thrive will be those that can quickly understand how others solve problems, then create better solutions tailored to their specific circumstances.

This shift goes beyond just software tools. The same principles apply to business processes, marketing approaches, even operational strategies. AI gives you the ability to rapidly analyze what works elsewhere and adapt it to your situation.

The question isn’t whether this trend will accelerate - it’s whether you’ll develop the skills to take advantage of it.

What Changes Tomorrow

If you’re not thinking about this strategically yet, here’s where to start. Begin developing systematic competitive analysis capabilities. Learn to extract insights from how successful businesses approach problems similar to yours. Master at least basic AI-assisted prototyping, even if it’s just using tools like Claude or ChatGPT to rapidly test ideas and create simple solutions.

Most importantly, create decision frameworks for when custom solutions make sense versus when existing tools are the better choice. The successful approach combines strategic thinking with rapid execution capabilities.

The build vs. buy decision isn’t disappearing - but AI has completely changed the variables in the equation. Understanding this shift might be one of the most valuable business skills you can develop right now.

Until next time,

Jim

P.S. I’m curious how this resonates with your own experience. Have you found yourself building solutions you would have bought just a few years ago? Or are you still primarily buying tools rather than creating them? Hit reply and let me know where you’re seeing these shifts in your own work.

Signal Over Noise is written, re-written, shredded, started over and finally published by Jim Christian. Subscribe for free: signalovernoise.at​

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