Staff writer

Hugh Durkin

Picture of a laptop with computer code
Strategy

Your API Is Not A Feature

Early stage SaaS companies survive and thrive by creating new customer value as fast as they can. Ignore feature requests from your early adopters at your peril. They churn, you fail.

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Analysis

Browsers, Not Apps, Are Still The Future Of Mobile

In late 2016, whilst leading the Developer Platform team at Intercom, I published a blog post titled “Browsers, not apps, are the future of mobile.” It quickly became the most-read post published on Inside Intercom that year, and generated a lot of debate — externally on Hacker News and Medium, and internally within Intercom.

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Strategy

Platform Partnerships That Get Measured, Get Managed

The list of ‘product’ companies that have committed to become ‘platform’ companies is short. The list of ‘product’ companies that have successfully become ‘platform’ companies is even shorter. Mature partnerships — and partner programs — are common trait of those rare successful platforms.

Screenshot from Google Ngram of the word "Platform"
Strategy

What is a Platform?

From enabling passengers to embark and disembark trains, to vertebra-crushing shoes, and operating systems like Microsoft Windows, “platform” has been used to describe many different things, in many different contexts, over a long period of time.

Photo of an early McDonald's outlet
Strategy

What Technology Platforms Can Learn from McDonald’s

With 40,000 outlets in 120 countries serving almost 70 million customers every day, McDonald’s is one of the most valuable brands in the world. The Golden Arches and Ronald McDonald are symbols recognized everywhere, and Justin Timberlake’s song “I’m Lovin’ It” is one of the most famous jingles of all time.

About the author

Founder of DeveloperEcosystem.com.

Built products and platforms at Facebook, Intercom, Zalando and HubSpot.

I share lessons on platform strategy, startups, and bootstrapping.

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