Product to Platforms

How SaaS products can transition from being just products to platform products

1. Products to Platforms
Arpit Rai
VP Products, WebEngage

2. How is platform different from product
●Product
○Solves specific problem eg. Salesforce CRM
●Platform
○Infrastructure to support solving of multiple problems eg. Salesforce’s Force.com

3. Some examples of platforms
●Established: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Salesforce
○eg. Amazon: AWS is a platform, Alexa is a platform (skill development), Amazon.com is a
platform (anyone call sell)
●Relatively New: WeChat, Hubspot, Box.com

4. Basics of any platform
●Co-creation of value for customers
●Helps to solve multiple use cases
●Easy to integrate with
●Constantly getting improved
●Should have open standards and very very developer friendly
●Outstanding developer support and documentation
○Box.com is so obsessed about their documentation that they have a product manager and an
engineering team focused only on documentation
●Needs a large network

5. ●Product becomes platform
○Eg. WeChat, Salesforce, Hubspot etc.
●Start off as a platform itself
○Eg. Segment.com, Zapier etc.
How do platforms come into existence

6. Possible to start off as a platform itself?
●Product to platform has been done many times before
●Platform first is hard but doable
○Platforms by definition are vast and address lots of things. Product, on the other hand,
generally has MVP to solve small functionality
○High upfront costs to build a vast platform that does a bunch of things
○Too much time to build if platforms covers lots of things
○Platforms might seem as unfinished or messy to early customers
○Also, moving to a platform will not revive a struggling product

7. When can a product become a platform
●Large established product with sizeable user base
●Solve core function well and improve it continuously year after year
○Eg. Amazon (Alexa)
●Proprietary and unique data that other applications can benefit from
○Eg. Salesforce (CRM data), Facebook (Identity data) etc.
●Distribution and whether you have a large user base that others can tap into
●Can get people on both sides - developers & customers

8. Advantages of a platform
●10X market size
●More value to users
●Makes core product appear flexible
●Positive feedback loop
○More developers add apps > Value increases > Newer customers > More developers ... > ...
●Stickiness / Lock-in / Less churn / Super LTV. All by choice.
○Can’t buy and discard platforms that are deeply integrated with your ecosystem!

9. Why do platforms fail
●Focus on which side first - customers or developers?
○Eg. Windows Mobile
●Don’t embrace openness
○Eg. Twitter
●Being too greedy and not sharing surplus
○Eg. VAS industry in India (Vodafone, Airtel etc.)
●Critical mass should come before money spent
○Value of platform is in the ecosystem so build a bigger and better ecosystem
●Difficult to build something when you aren’t solving predefined set of use
cases.
○What baseline infrastructure and framework to build?