

The Dangers of Building on Someone Else's Platform - mcantelon
http://trevoro.ca/blog/2010/04/12/the-dangers-of-building-on-someone-elses-platform/

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rdrimmie
Filling in a vendor's niche is about as old a business model as vendors and
there has always, always, always been the risk of being replaced by a built-in
solution.

It's got nothing to do with the vendors being hostile nor is it even remotely
curious or in any way novel. It is the way industry works. An enterprising
someone finds a niche and either grows the niche and the niche is either paved
over or absorbed. Rinse repeat etc.

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megaduck
I think it's worth pointing out here that the most successful (largest)
companies are full-stack vendors that have as few external dependencies as
possible.

Look at the histories of Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, eBay, Adobe, IBM,
HP, etc. All of them had complete, standalone products right out of the gate.
More to the point, they took the revenue from that product and then moved to
ruthlessly and consistently 'fill gaps', displacing other businesses along the
way.

If your business depends on somebody else's "platform", then you're quite
likely living on borrowed time. It might be okay as a way to bootstrap, but
I'd recommend getting as independent as you can, as soon as possible.

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jcnnghm
This is a huge problem lately. In the last two weeks we've seen hostile action
from Apple, Facebook, Ning, Stack Overflow, and Twitter. Building something
with other peoples tools is too risky at this point. If you're successful,
they'll just change the terms of service, ban you, and implement your product.

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runevault
I think the trick is to have a long term plan that makes you less tied to the
platform, if not get out from it entirely, but use the advantages of whatever
platform you pick to jump start you into cash flow and notice that lets you
find a market and then build from there.

Trick is figuring out how much time you'll need to move out from under the
shadow of the service you are hooking on to, and that I'm not sure if can be
easily figured in many situations.

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byoung2
Take the example of vBSEO. Since 2005, their main product has been a plugin
that addresses the missing SEO element in vBulletin. You would think that
vBulletin would either build this functionality into newer versions or buy
vBSEO, but it hasn't happened yet. In fact, with several patents for SEO
technology, when it does happen, they'll probably have other products and
services ready.

I think starting by improving an existing moustrap gives you enough of a
headstart over startups building entirely new mousetraps, that once you have
market share and profitability, you can branch out into other areas.

~~~
rick888
vBSEO is just one example. They are lucky that vBulletin hasn't added this
functionality to their main product line.

