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Re:Ask HN: SaaS vs. build it yourself when launching a startup by err4nt on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @02:36PM (#9416028)
My advice is to only depend on commodities, not services. a commodity is something so generic and interchangeable that you can hardly distinguish between competitors. In this way, every external thing you rely on is a potential single-point-of-failure, but can be easily fixed.

If the thing youre depending on is unique and essential to your business, you're taking a risk because your success depends on their continued success and if that service goes down you go down with it because it cant be easily replaced.

TL;DR You dont have to reinvent the wheel, but for all of the off-the-shelf products you use make sure there are plenty you can replace it with at any time.

Re:Ask HN: SaaS vs. build it yourself when launching a startup by bubu139 on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @02:56PM (#9416179)
To complete my answer I also agree on the fact that you need to find Saas you can rely on and your business need to have solid foundations.

You definitely need to find out what is the essential part of your business (that makes you unique) and what's not, to let someone "better" do the job for you or do it yourself.

I'm curious to know what the threads were saying at the launch of AWS though :)