Your fear is correctly placed. I've seen plenty of companies rewriting complex software written by a third party considered ineffective. Here's why they fail:

Your fear is correctly placed. I've seen plenty of companies rewriting complex software written by a third party considered ineffective. Here's why they fail: - Underestimate the work and assign a team of 4 juniors to replace the work done by an entire company - Implement new features during the rewrite: never do that, focus on getting a 1:1 replica first - Business people pressure the team in various stupid ways (artificial deadlines, scrum) because they've never done software and have no idea what's a software project or because they've read blog posts from influencer and they're bad at their jobs At 200-300M you're at the size where you can do your own software. I'd recommend to: - Buy the third party you complain about, then improve it - If that fails, pay people above average and good people will come. Try to find technical leaders with experience in product (think ex startuppers). Pay a bonus for good results. Give them operational freedom as long as they deliver results. It doesn't matter if they are employees or a software agency or contractors, they just need to be good and give you ownership of the code. Given you don't have talent in house, find a friend who is a good CTO or VP of eng and pay him/her to do some interviews. Best of luck