You need a video for your upcoming product launch. Your website copy hasn't been updated in two years. Sales is asking for case studies, and the board wants to see a refreshed investor deck by next quarter.

Your current team is stretched thin. You know they're talented, but asking your content marketer to suddenly become a video producer isn't fair to them, and it's risky for you. Yet hiring a full-time video specialist for a project that might wrap up in three months? That doesn't add up either.

If you're a founder or commercial leader at a growing biotech or tech company, this tension probably feels familiar. In today's economy, where every dollar is scrutinized and every headcount decision carries weight, the question of when to hire versus when to outsource has never been more consequential.

The Real Question Isn't About Cost

Most leaders frame the build vs. buy decision as a budget exercise. They compare the fully loaded cost of an employee against contractor rates, run the numbers, and make a call. But this misses the point entirely.

The real question is: What is the demand pattern for this work?

Think about it like capacity planning in a lab. You wouldn't purchase a mass spectrometer for a one-time experiment, but you also wouldn't rent one indefinitely if you're running the same assay every day. The decision isn't about whether the equipment is expensive; it's about utilization and consistency.

The same logic applies to talent.

A Framework for the Decision

Here's how I think about it: outsourcing makes strategic sense when your demand is surge-based, specialized, unpredictable, or when speed matters more than margin.

Surge-based demand. You need a brand refresh now. In six months, you won't. A product launch requires a concentrated burst of content creation, followed by a dramatic slowdown. If your workload has peaks and valleys rather than a steady rhythm, a full-time hire will either be overwhelmed or underutilized.

Highly specialized work. You need someone who can build a sophisticated demand-generation engine, but once it's built and running, day-to-day management is more straightforward. Or you need a video producer for a specific campaign. These aren't ongoing, full-time roles; they're precision strikes requiring specific expertise.

Unpredictable volume. You're not sure if this quarter's content push will become a sustained program or a one-time initiative. Market conditions are shifting. Customer feedback might redirect your strategy. When you can't forecast demand with confidence, flexibility has real value.

Speed over margin. You need to move fast. Recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, and ramping a new hire takes months. Activating the right external partner can happen in weeks.

What does outsourcing actually buy you in these scenarios? Speed, flexibility, surge capacity, and risk transfer. You're not just paying for the work, you're paying for the optionality to scale up or down without the sunk cost of a permanent hire.

When a Full-Time Hire Makes Sense

This isn't an argument against hiring. A full-time employee is the right choice when your demand is consistent and predictable.

If you need someone to execute the same type of work at roughly the same volume, week after week, a dedicated hire makes sense. You'll build institutional knowledge. You'll develop a team member who deeply understands your product, your customers, and your culture. And yes, at consistent volume, the economics typically favor employment over contract work.

The key word is consistent. Look at your past 12 months. If the workload has been relatively steady and you have no reason to expect that to change, you're likely paying a premium for surge capacity you don't need.

The Hybrid Model: Where Most Companies Actually Land

Here's what I've observed over the years: very few companies have marketing needs that are steady enough to justify building a large in-house team. The reality is usually more nuanced.

Once the initial strategy is set and the foundational work is established, execution often stabilizes into a more predictable rhythm. That's the moment when bringing on a mid-level hire, a marketing manager who can own day-to-day execution, makes sense.

But here's the key: that marketing manager still needs access to strategic leadership for guidance and specialized talent for projects outside their wheelhouse. The video production, the demand generation overhaul, and the brand refresh remain surge-based, specialized needs.

The model that works for most growing companies isn't "all outsourced" or "all in-house." It's a small, capable core team with access to a marketing strategist and a pool of specialized talent they can activate as needed. In my experience, it's rare that marketing needs are steady enough to justify a team larger than three full-time people, at least until you hit significant scale.

This hybrid approach gives you the best of both worlds: institutional knowledge and cultural alignment from your internal team, plus strategic horsepower and specialized expertise without the overhead of maintaining those capabilities in-house permanently.

The Hidden Risk of Neither Decision

What I see too often is the fourth path: leaders who don't make any choice. Instead, they stretch their existing team into roles they're not equipped for.

The marketing coordinator becomes the de facto video editor. The content writer is suddenly managing paid campaigns. The VP of Marketing is designing sales decks at midnight.

This approach feels safe because there's no new expense to justify. But the hidden costs are significant: mediocre output, burned-out employees, missed opportunities, and the slowest possible path to results.

In a cost-conscious environment, it's tempting to make do with what you have. But "making do" isn't a strategy. It's a way of deferring the decision while quietly paying for it in execution quality.

How to Audit Your Current Model

If you're unsure whether your current approach is working, ask yourself:

Is my team consistently working on projects outside their core expertise? Are we delivering work that meets the standard we'd expect if we brought in specialists? Are we moving as fast as our competitors? What would change if I had immediate access to senior expertise in [specific gap]?

The answers will usually point you toward the truth. If you're paying leadership salaries for people to do tactical work they weren't hired for, or if projects keep slipping because you're waiting for bandwidth to open up, your current model may be costing you more than you realize.

If the audit reveals a problem, here's what to do next.

First, categorize the work that's falling through the cracks. Make a list of everything that's been delayed, deprioritized, or done poorly in the last six months. Then sort it: Is this work surge-based or steady? Specialized or general? A one-time need or recurring?

Second, separate the strategic from the executional. Do you have someone who can set direction, define measurable goals, and build the systems to track progress? Or are you asking executors to be strategists as well? These are different capabilities. If you lack the strategic layer, that's where to start, because execution without strategy is just activity.

Third, identify what can be handed off immediately. Which items on your list could a specialist handle in weeks rather than the months it would take your team to ramp up? These are your quick wins. Activating external expertise for surge-based or specialized work frees your internal team to focus on what they do best.

Fourth, design the steady-state structure. Once the foundational strategy is set and systems are built, what does ongoing execution actually require? Usually, it's less than you think. A capable marketing manager with clear goals, established processes, and access to strategic guidance and specialized talent on demand can accomplish more than a stretched team twice the size.

The goal isn't to eliminate spending, it's to match your investment to your actual demand pattern and stop paying hidden costs in mediocre output and burnout.

A Practical Path Forward

The build vs. buy decision isn't permanent. Think of it as a dynamic calibration based on current conditions.

Start by mapping your actual demand. Look at the past six to 12 months. Where have you needed specialized expertise? Was the demand spiky or steady? What work is sitting undone because you don't have the right capabilities?

Then match your model to your reality. Outsource the surge-based, specialized, and unpredictable. Hire for the consistent. Consider the hybrid: a small core team with access to strategic guidance and specialized talent on demand. And stop asking your current team to fill gaps they weren't designed to fill.

The companies that navigate this economy successfully won't be the ones who avoided spending; they'll be the ones who spent strategically, getting expert results without building infrastructure they don't need.

Ready to explore what the right talent model looks like for your organization? Let's talk.