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Are Platform Technologies A Scam?

By In Technology

Can someone actually explain to me what Sharepoint does?  If I worked in Microsoft’s sales department the best pitch I could give is:

“It’s the greatest, most versatile product that has ever existed. You can use it to run any complex system that your imagination could dream up.” This however would only be what I would pitch, not believe.

I’ve asked the question “ What does Sharepoint do?” to Microsoft sales staff, developers, and consultants. It always starts with something like: “Well… it’s, you know, like… a collaboration tool… BUT! It can do a ton of other stuff too”.

And that is the best answer I’ve gotten.

I’ve asked the same question of SAP vendors, Microsoft Dynamics consultants, and IBM Watson Cloud experts. The answer is always some amorphous, borderline ridiculous answer consisting of “well it does a lot of things” and “it greatly depends on the user”. This was not me asking rhetorical questions either. I was not trying to be glib, or overly clever, or even to pull some sort of #iamverysmart coup de grâce. I was trying to articulate what I do for a living by standing on the shoulders of “giants”.

You see, my company builds a “platform as a service” (roughly) type product as well. Something that could be more than one thing to more than one person. I struggle constantly with explaining that our product is better than anything else on the entire market. This is not a brag, nor a marketing ploy – but only because what we do is so niche that only 100 or so companies in the world might care. And that is not the game IBM, Microsoft, and SAP are playing. They are ultimately the owners of your software. Sure the configurations, the modifications, and the custom programming on top of these platforms is yours, but if they take the platform away, or stop supporting it, what do you really have left? It’s even tougher in “the cloud” business because then if your subscription runs out you’re dead.

I recently made a prediction to a friend who was starting a project with IBM. I warned them of the potential lock-in problem by making a prediction something along the lines of “They are going to tell you they can build it quicker and more effienctly with IBM Watson Cloud. No project ever runs perfectly, and when you finally step in to set things straight, you will find out you have zero leverage. They will simply say you are more than welcome to fire them, because they know you would have to build everything over from scratch”. My predictions were to no avail. No one ever gets fired for hiring IBM. And guess what happened? The only upside is that I get to say “I told you so” a little more often.

There is hope! There are other ways that platforms can be useful but also safe. One way is to use an open source platform, one that if at worst comes to worst, you can fire all your consultants and hire new ones, and the platform is still going to be around.

This is a little tougher with very niche enterprise products like ours, but we’ve done something a little different to combat my lock-in loathing: Our  products are OWNED by our clients. We sign a three year, non-exclusive agreement with our clients for support and maintenance,  and a traditional license fee is baked in. They get all the source code, and agree not to resell it. But if we don’t perform, or our clients want to go a different way, they get to keep the software and build on it themselves. We earn our right to be at the table by being the experts in a system we designed, working with their developers, adding new features, bringing our industry expertise to the conversation, and hundreds of other small bits of value. In this way we hope to be at the top of the renewals list in three years.

The idea of someone taking your software away from me is abhorrent. If your car company one day sent you an email saying that you now had to upgrade your fuel tank, and there was going to be a new subscription service if you wanted to keep using the same type of gasoline, you would riot in the streets. The model of software is not what is wrong here, what is wrong is the lock-in. Vendor lock-in is amoral. If there is no ability to keep something running, and there is no TRUE data portability option, then you are basically being extorted.

I get that as a business you are trying to maximize profit. I try to do the same thing. However I want to my product and my company to seen as sticky because we are valuable, and not because we would just be too painful to get rid of.

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I help companies turn their technical ideas into reality. CEO @Sourcetoad and @OnDeck. Author of Herding Cats and Coders. Fan of squash, whiskey, aggressive inline, and temperamental British sports cars.

Don’t Fall Into the Trap: Why Startup Software Development Isn’t Like Corporate Development

In Startups, Technology

So, you’ve left the corporate world, and now it’s time to build your own startup. You’ve probably managed dev teams before, overseen product launches, maybe even helmed some fancy project management tools that made everything run like a well-oiled machine. You’ve done this before, right? Not exactly. When it’s your startup, everything changes—and, as I’ll explain, if you assume it’ll work the same way, you’re heading for a few surprises.

Startup founders often fall into a dangerous trap when starting a software project from scratch: thinking it’ll be just like building software inside an established company. Here’s why it’s not—and some advice on how to navigate the differences.

1. Switching from Product Manager to Teacher

In an established company, a software team already has two things that give them a serious edge: an existing market and a deep understanding of the business. They’re working within a proven model. Developers in that environment know what questions to ask, can fill in gaps intuitively, and likely understand why they’re building what they’re building.

At a startup, however, your devs are going to need a whole lot more context. They’re not working with familiar requirements—they’re working with your vision, which may be abstract at this stage. If your development team doesn’t understand why something matters, it’s a recipe for ambiguity and frustration on both sides.

Advice: Think of yourself less as a product manager and more as a teacher. Your job is to make sure they understand the core problems, not just the features. Teach them why each requirement matters, help them visualize the end-user, and create that shared language for decision-making. It might feel tedious, but it’s essential to avoid future misalignment and expensive rewrites.

2. Beware of Perfectionism — It’s the Budget Killer

In a large company, products with an existing user base often have to be polished. Features need to be rock-solid, invoices have to be perfect, and everything needs an audit trail. Startups, however, have a different goal: get an MVP in the hands of users fast. It’s a classic trap for first-time founders—focusing on “perfection” and “polish” before knowing if the business model even works.

Startup perfectionism is budget poison. It’s shocking how quickly adding “nice-to-have” features can chew through funding, especially if you’re paying a dev team to build things like automated invoicing or churn management before you’ve even proven people want what you’re selling.

Advice: Ruthlessly strip down your MVP. If a feature doesn’t help you validate your market, it goes on the “later” list. Keep the scope laser-focused on what helps you test your business assumptions. Let the non-essential features wait until you know you have customers who’ll use them.

3. Zen and the Art of the Startup Pivot

Building software for a startup means embracing one cold, hard truth: the business model will change. According to research, 93% of successful startups pivot at least once (and often more). Imagine being asked to go out and passionately sell something that you know might not look the same next year—or next month. It takes a level of zen acceptance that your original idea will likely morph, but that’s what keeps you flexible and ready to capture new opportunities.

For founders, that requires a mindset shift. You have to believe in your product, while also knowing you might be building the “wrong thing” in some way. The focus should be on preserving capital and brainpower for what’s next. The game is less about proving you’re right and more about staying adaptable.

Advice: Budget with pivots in mind. Set your burn rate assuming you’ll need to make big changes. Don’t let ego get in the way of listening to the market, and keep enough gas in the tank for at least one big strategic turn.

4. The Hard Work of Being Your Own “Internal Customer”

Here’s another big one. In a corporate environment, you have internal customers—departments or stakeholders with specific goals that align with the overall company mission. For a startup, the only customer you have is you. You don’t have a preexisting feedback loop from various departments, and you don’t have established success metrics. You have to create that from scratch.

Advice: Start by building an internal customer profile based on your target market, then use that to set clear goals and success criteria for your dev team. If you’re focused on, say, usability for early adopters, set KPIs around usability testing and build from there. By acting as your own “internal customer,” you’re setting a clear direction and saving your team from working in a vacuum.

5. Get Ready to Build AND Sell

Corporate software development often has the luxury of a separate, dedicated sales team to deliver the product to the right audience. As a startup founder, you’re both the builder and the seller. That means you’re not just iterating on software—you’re iterating on messaging, product-market fit, pricing, and maybe even distribution models.

Advice: Factor in time for sales-ready iteration in your dev cycle. As you build, keep track of how each release or update affects the user experience. Ask yourself if the changes make your pitch clearer or simpler and how they align with the current market’s needs. Ultimately, this approach will help you bridge the gap between building the product and ensuring it’s market-ready.

Conclusion

Building software as a startup founder requires a whole different toolkit than you may be used to. You’re part-teacher, part-salesperson, part-zen master, and always the chief budget officer. By recognizing the unique mindset shifts and traps of startup software development, you’re positioning yourself—and your team—for the best chance of success. Focus on creating clarity for your team, set ruthless priorities, embrace change, and never lose sight of the fact that the first version is just the beginning. In the startup world, adaptability isn’t just a skill—it’s the entire game.