When Startups Should Vertically Integrate Their Supply

Also Capital Founder @nunzi46: Too many startups vertically integrate without any real strategic reason. "You should not vertically integrate just for vertical integration's sake. It's a poor use of capital to take a bunch of equity and put it into a commodity machine, which you could instead not do." "I love the theory behind 'the factory is the product,' but there's some strong strategy that it needs to be built on." "SpaceX is a good canonical example. Why did they build a factory? Because they were creating massive demand at the same time they were trying to deliver it at a given unit price to unlock a bigger economic opportunity. There were no third parties even available. They had to do it themselves." "If you're going to build a factory in three years, you need to be thinking about it now. So - why are you building that factory? What competitive advantages does it give you?"