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?