"This talk occurred at KubeCon SLC, 2024 The platform engineering team's role has evolved into a pivotal one as the custodian of the internal developer platform. However, these teams often find themselves in a quagmire of identifying the right components to include in their platforms, particularly in the ever-expanding CNCF landscape. This panel session discusses these challenges by exploring the concept of 'Paved Paths' as a strategic approach to guide platform teams in their journey of building an internal developer platform (IDP). 'Paved Paths' offers a solution by providing platform engineering teams with proven reference architectures (e.g. CNOE and the BACK Stack). This approach prevents them from starting from scratch and getting lost in the vast CNCF landscape. By offering proven and opinionated reference architectures, platform teams can focus on enhancing developer experiences and optimizing higher-level workflows rather than grappling with the complexities of identifying foundational components for their IDP."