Dan Luu on Nostr: Of course software companies of era also built a lot of their own infra in cases ...

Of course software companies of era also built a lot of their own infra in cases where there was no remotely reasonable commercial product, but once you could buy stuff, per https://danluu.com/nothing-works/, basically everyone suggested buying over building if at all possible. Not only did (many) hardware companies not this, even small startups could and did produce tools that exceeded state-of-the-art commercially available tools in areas that were critical to business/product success.