Reaching commercial scale is one of the most complicated challenges in the synbio industry. Companies can spend years and millions of dollars developing processes that don’t scale effectively. To overcome this, many contract outside experts to develop their systems for them. But this isn’t always the best approach. When is developing in-house capabilities more beneficial to a company’s roadmap? What do in-house solutions provide that external innovators often overlook? And what what do synbio leaders need to factor into their scale-up timeline as the pressure to reach the market rapidly increases?