Every week a founder DMs me the same question: "Should I build my React Native app from scratch or buy a template?" Here's the framework I use to answer it, plus the five wrong assumptions that make the debate louder than it needs to be.
TL;DR
Differentiation lives in the product (AI pipeline, marketplace mechanics, workflow)? Buy a template and spend your engineering budget on the differentiation.
Differentiation lives in the infrastructure (custom protocol, native audio pipeline, novel storage engine)? Build from scratch.
Roughly 90% of consumer and prosumer apps live in bucket one and pretend to live in bucket two.
