The oldest debate in entrepreneurship asks a binary question: should you build a company from scratch or buy one that already runs? Akam Hamak’s answer refuses the binary. Do both, he says, and develop the judgment to know which the situation calls for. That discernment, more than a preference for either path, is the real skill.
Hamak’s instinct leans toward acquisition, and he has built much of his work around it. He buys internet businesses that already have customers and revenue, then improves them. The logic is hard to argue with. The riskiest question any startup faces, whether anyone actually wants the product, is already answered when you acquire a business with a paying customer base. You inherit proof of demand and get to focus on making the thing better.
“I became interested in entrepreneurship, investing, and acquiring digital businesses at an early age,” he says, naming acquisition as a discipline equal to the others. For Hamak, buying and improving a business is not a lesser path than building one. It is a creative act with its own demands: spotting an undervalued asset, understanding why it underperforms, and executing the improvements that unlock its potential.
But he still builds when the problem warrants it. TabSlice, the hospitality bill-splitting platform he co-founded, is an original product built rather than acquired. It emerged from his habit of solving everyday problems with technology, a problem real enough and unsolved enough to justify building from zero. When no good tool exists for a genuine need, Hamak’s builder instinct, honed since his teenage coding years, takes over.
The choice between the two is situational rather than ideological. An overlooked business with clear room to improve is a buy; the value is already there, waiting to be unlocked. A real, unsolved problem with no adequate solution is a build; the value has to be created. Hamak reads each opportunity on its own terms rather than forcing it into a predetermined preference.
Both paths serve the same underlying goal: owning assets that compound over time. Whether he acquires a business or builds one, Hamak is accumulating durable, value-generating assets within his group of companies, not chasing quick exits. The build-or-buy decision is tactical; the strategy above it, long-term ownership and compounding, never changes.
His technical depth is what makes the dual approach viable. Evaluating a business to acquire requires understanding its product and infrastructure well enough to judge its real condition, a skill Hamak developed through years of coding and security work. The same depth lets him build credibly when he chooses to. Few founders are equally equipped to assess an acquisition target and to ship an original product.
There is a risk-management logic in keeping both options open. A founder who only builds bets everything on unproven demand; a founder who only buys may miss genuine opportunities to create something new. By holding both tools, Hamak can always choose the lower-risk, higher-return path for a given situation, rather than being locked into one mode regardless of fit.
Underneath it all sits his preference for patience over spectacle. Whether acquiring or building, Hamak plays for multi-year value rather than a fast flip or a viral launch. He buys businesses to hold and improve them, and he builds products to grow them steadily. The time horizon is the constant; the method adapts to the opportunity.
This flexibility reflects a maturity unusual in a young founder. Many entrepreneurs anchor their identity to a single approach, building because it is romantic or buying because it is fashionable. Hamak treats both as instruments, choosing based on the problem rather than the story. That detachment from method, in service of outcome, is itself a competitive advantage.
The real skill, in Hamak’s framing, is not a preference for building or for buying but the judgment to read each situation correctly. That discernment is harder to develop than either technique, because it requires honestly assessing demand, value, and risk without the comfort of a fixed rule to fall back on. It is the kind of judgment that comes from experience and from the technical depth to understand what one is actually looking at, which is why few young founders can exercise it well.
His detachment from method is itself a competitive advantage. Many entrepreneurs anchor their identity to a single approach and then bend every opportunity to fit it, building because it feels visionary or buying because it feels shrewd. Hamak treats both as instruments and chooses based on the problem in front of him, a flexibility that lets him take the lower-risk, higher-return path in any given case rather than forcing a favored method onto a situation that does not suit it.
That judgment is earned, not innate. After building and testing nearly 100 online ventures, most of them never launched publicly, Hamak has watched enough businesses succeed and stall to read a new opportunity quickly, whether it is better bought or built.
The result is an operator who can move fluidly between creating and acquiring, always pointed at the same destination. Build when the problem demands it, buy when the value is already there, and in both cases hold for the long term. More on his build-and-buy approach is available at his website.
Learn more: akamhamak.com | Connect on LinkedIn