This week’s Sunday Rewind is a 2019 #mtpcon San Francisco talk from Brandon Chu, then VP of Product at Shopify, on what platforms can mean for our product strategies, and what his team learned as they discovered how to build a platform at Shopify.
Brandon starts by defining a platform. He says a product is building something to ship to customers, a platform is building a place where other builders or creators can build things to ship to customers.
Brandon says there are three types of platform:
This is some of what Brandon’s team at Shopify learned about product extension platforms.
At Shopify, they structured teams around the flywheel, building teams focused on the tools developers need to build, teams focused on helping users discover and access apps, and teams focused on helping developers be successful with areas like payout and user data.
While tight restrictions and policies may help earn trust with consumers, it can have the opposite effect on developers. Keeping tight control on your platform can make you difficult to work with, and push developers away, regardless of your user base. To earn trust with developers
Platforms take a long time to come to fruition – Shopify took over five years to see its platform strategy show some real success. Your company must be willing to invest the time and energy to see it through long-term.
Watch the original talk: Platform management by Brandon Chu
Comments
Join the community
Sign up for free to share your thoughts