t’s important to think about platforms and ecosystems together as platforms by themselves aren’t useful unless someone is using them. The term platform is thrown around in product marketing material to the point that its requires further definition. I like Bill Gates’s take: “A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it”. Ben Thompson offers a great post with more on this definition in [The Bill Gates Line](https://stratechery.com/2018/the-bill-gates-line/): ![[Pasted image 20250831221225.png]] You can find more of his thinking here: [https://stratechery.com/outline/platforms-and-ecosystems/](https://stratechery.com/outline/platforms-and-ecosystems/) According to Ben Thompson, another dominant force in technology are aggregators which attract end users by virtue of their inherent usefulness: ![[Pasted image 20250831221242.png]] I largely agree with Ben’s [Aggregation Theory](https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/) but I think aggregators often act like platforms as they extend out to adjacent markets. ## Platform as a Garden From Alex Komoroske’s Gardening Platforms ([komoroske.com/gardening-platforms](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cY95dRixFho0pMIlrEFcGL_XKVy9vnE4NGOD6TQMj50/view#slide=id.ge22ee69ee7_0_1498)): ![[Pasted image 20250831221305.png]] ![[Pasted image 20250831221315.png]] ![[Pasted image 20250831221322.png]] ## The role of a Platform PM [Making the Shift to Platform Product Management](https://medium.com/@wyattearp/making-the-shift-to-platform-product-management-15e1ee061b6a) ## Platform & ecosystem evolution [Making Sense of Technological Ecosystems](https://learnwardleymapping.com/2020/07/24/making-sense-of-technological-ecosystems/) From [Real-world platforms are messy](https://thecompendium.cards/c/real-platforms-are-messy) ![[Pasted image 20250831221354.png]] From [A platform must be coevolved with its ecosystem](https://thecompendium.cards/c/platforms-coevolve-with-ecosystem) ![[Pasted image 20250831221403.png]] From [The ideal goals of rational platforms](https://thecompendium.cards/c/rational-platforms) ![[Pasted image 20250831221410.png]] From [Platforms don't have killer use cases](https://thecompendium.cards/c/platforms-dont-have-killer-use-cases) ![[Pasted image 20250831221420.png]] ## Dealing with legacy platforms Legacy platforms imply that there is a new platform on the table or at least on the horizon. It’s first worth the effort to diagnose the problems with the existing stack [https://jonnyleroy.com/2011/02/03/dealing-with-creaky-legacy-platforms/](https://jonnyleroy.com/2011/02/03/dealing-with-creaky-legacy-platforms/)