Lately, admin panel seems to be a recurring theme in my life. I had a discussion with someone at a startup about which one to use.

Needless to say, there is plenty of options in the market place – everything from home brew custom solution to managed services to low-code platforms. Stuff like this obviously requires some research before any commitment. Since the company needing this is a very early stage startup. I proposed a drag-and-drop low-code editor with a plethora of pre-built components to build internal CRUD (create, read, update, delete) app. It is a market leader in the space and is quite scalable.

Unfortunately, the person I proposed to did not agree. His main reason was that a custom solution would be able to provide more control.

Rewind 8 years, I would probably give a similar response. I used to enjoy being able to build everything from scratch. The ability to control every bit of your tech stack was essential or so I thought. The company was with started to grow but at some point we hit a wall. We had a Django monolith and overtime the codebase grew very quickly. Then, support for Python 2 ceased and we had a hell of a time switching Python 3. Compliance and security control to meet SOC 2 were not trivial either. I was wrong and learned it the hard way.

Now, I carefully evaluate decisions before committing, typically with an eye towards the next fundraising goal. If I build, it would be towards a real intellectual property that the company can and should own. If I buy, I do it to save time, so that we can grow quickly without the baggage.

It is a bit like dating and marriage. Most people wouldn’t marry before dating. And even when you marry, neither spouse should be a control freak. It would make life very miserable for some people.

Lesson learned: pick your tech and tools carefully.