No recipes

A very good read on platforms & a reflection on marketing worldviews, a weird computer hardware recommendation, and a last reminder about BPN

Steven Sinofsky, a former head honcho at Microsoft, has recently published his Ultimate Guide to Platforms and it's a very good read. (At the end of this post is a Claude-100k summary of the article if you want to make sure you'll think it's a good read before you invest ~1hr of your time to find out.)

I find platforms fascinating because they are little complex adaptive systems; systems with at least 4 kinds of agents (the platform owner, users, developers, and ecosystem members like trainers, consultants, and so forth). Such systems feature non-linearity, adaptation, a certain amount of bottom-up organization, co-evolution, and emergent behavior. This means step-by-step recipes do not work -- the same input won't produce the same output every time. There is no recipe for building a platform.

Ben Thompson talks about platforms with the tidy generalizations of the strategist, while in Sinofsky's writing I hear a measure more humility and recognition of the complexities of the real world — the voice of the practitioner. Both have valuable perspectives.

We sometimes take our own perspective for granted until we encounter a contrasting one. I was speaking to a prospect recently and they said "...we need a sophisticated marketing funnel because our projects are multiple 6-figures...". I referred them elsewhere because that belief won't allow them to see the value in the simpler approaches I advocate. I also think they're probably wrong, but I didn't feel like trying to get them to change their worldview on a 30-minute call.

If we turn their and my competing worldviews into a question, the question would be, "what causes multiple 6-figure projects?" There's not just one recipe, is there? There are certainly some necessary ingredients, like the ability to deliver on a project of that scope. And one extremely necessary ingredient would be a prospect who has those resources to spend and believes that they are likely to get a good ROI on the expense.

Does it take a sophisticated marketing funnel to intercept that prospect and create that belief -- the belief that your firm is the one that should be selected to take your approach to solving the problem and thereby co-create value in excess of the price? Maybe in some situations it does? But without specific supporting evidence, I wouldn't automatically assume that a sophisticated marketing funnel is needed.

If I had felt like challenging this prospect’s belief, I would have asked: "why is a sophisticated marketing funnel needed here?" It would have been a gift to be proven wrong because I would have learned something new from it.

I have my point of view on marketing, and I have my own beliefs and worldview that impinge on questions related to marketing. And part of that worldview is, as with platforms, there are no easy, repeatable recipes that work the same way every time. This leads to a heuristic: if you don't have specific evidence that supports a complex approach for your situation, try some simple stuff first. Bake a sheet cake before you try to construct a 4-tier wedding cake with pillars between the tiers.

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I recently started using a Hisense 43A6H as a computer display. To save you the Googling, that is a 43" 4k television. It is an EXTREMELY LARGE display. I and my aging eyes love it. For $220, it's the best dollar-per-square-foot I've ever spent on a computer display. My needs are productivity plus a bit of photo editing, and this ginormous IPS panel does what I need. I wish it was less reflective and would power up from standby when it detects HDMI signal rather than needing to be manually powered back on but aside from that, I'd recommend it to other cheapskates out there in search of an EXTREMELY LARGE display.

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I pushed back the start date of the Better Professional Network Study Group to Tuesday, June 13, so if you're interested you can still join. The price is $600 (1-time, not recurring)

This virtual study group is meant to help you use introvert-friendly methods to build a better professional network. It's not a course with a recipe or plan; instead, it's more of a laboratory where we're all experimenting with a few simple ideas I'll bring to the group, learning from each other as we do, and working to build at least one new sustainable network-focused bizdev habit or process into your business.

Format:

• 3 months duration, starting June, 2023

• The whole group meets realtime via Zoom video call every 2 weeks for a 2 hour discussion session. The discussion will be pretty tightly-structured to maximize group learning and progress. Meeting times:

  • June 13, 2023: Start time - 9am MT / 11am ET / 4pm BST / 5pm CEST

  • June 27, 2023

  • July 11, 2023

  • July 25, 2023

  • August 8, 2023

  • August 22, 2023

  • September 5, 2023

• There is a Slack channel for the group.

• Philip will host weekly office hours where any group member can drop by with questions, to talk through challenges, get ideas on positioning/POV, get a dash of encouragement, etc.

Price: $600 1-time

Signup deadline: by the start of the first realtime video call, which is June 13, 2023 9am MT / 11am ET / 4pm BST / 5pm CEST

If you're interested in joining, please sign up here: https://buy.stripe.com/aEU4jRabm8z75vW4gq . If you have questions before joining, email me: philip@philipmorganconsulting.com

May we all bake delicious sheet cakes before we go for the wedding cake,
-P

Here is a summary of Sinofsky's "Ultimate Guide to Platforms" article:

The article discusses the concept of technology platforms and the lifecycle of platforms. It defines a platform as a technology that serves as an ingredient for the success of others and achieves its own market position.

The author outlines different models of platforms such as APIs, user experience, apps, data storage platforms, etc. He discusses reasons why platforms fail at launch like not solving customer problems, doing too much/too little, and charging in the wrong way. Successful platforms enable others' success, get out of the way, and are substantial and sticky.

The platform lifecycle stages discussed include: launching as a "toy", doing everything, then becoming too complicated. Partners introduce new ways to do old things and there is a lack of oxygen. The platform starts getting in partners' way, asking for too much, and becoming too complex. Eventually, partners just want stability and there is no one left to use new features.

The conclusion is that technology platforms have an initial rise to success followed by a long demise. They succumb to paradigm shifts, not every innovation. The essay aims to provide a framework for analyzing platform evolution and success/failure factors. The key takeaways are that platforms should solve real problems, enable others' success, and focus on what customers want - not deliberately engineer stickiness.

In summary, the article presents a comprehensive look at what makes a technology platform successful or doomed to fail, focusing on strategies, pitfalls and the typical lifecycle stages of platforms. The concepts are illustrated with examples of different platforms.

Here are some additional key points about technology platforms from the article:

• Truly successful platforms don't start out by deliberately trying to become platforms. They start by trying to solve a problem, and gain traction organically through enthusiastic early adopters. This user-driven success then leads them to becoming a platform.

• Platforms fail when they don't actually solve customer problems, but instead try to solve their own problem. Or when they do too much or too little, or charge customers in the wrong way.

• Developers are crucial to building a successful platform. The platform needs to make developers successful in order for them to build on and sustain it.

• An ecosystem, not just the technology itself, is what platforms actually produce. This means considering all the stakeholders involved, not just developers.

• A platform's goal should be to make others successful, not act as a "tax" on them. It should "get out of the way" and enable partners and users to shine.

• Stickiness comes as a natural consequence of creating a useful platform that people want to use, not from deliberately engineering high switching costs.

• The key stages of a platform's lifecycle involve it starting small, rapidly expanding functionality, then becoming too complex and overwhelming for users as it tries to do everything. Eventually it stagnates as partners just want stability.

• Rather than having a "moat", platforms either currently have dominance or they don't. "Moat" is usually applied retrospectively after they become successful.

• Ultimately platforms succumb to true paradigm shifts, not every incremental innovation. But their demise takes much longer than their rise to success, due to the product-market fit they achieve.

Those are some of the main points that summarize the interesting insights about technology platforms discussed in the article. Let me know if you have any other questions!

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