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What about the risk of relying on a 3rd party platform? How to de-risk that?

• nercht12 10y ago
  Maybe... [1] The platform is new, untested. [2] The platform is tested and out of beta. [3] The platform has a decent number of users. [4] The platform has a large userbase with good reviews. [5] The platform is a self-sustaining (usually paid) service with good reviews and tons of users.
  • AznHisoka 10y ago
    I don't understand how those are ways to de-risk that risk. As an example, I am talking about a company like "Buffer" or Twitter developers that rely on the Twitter API for their startup.
    • nercht12 10y ago
      The original comment was ambiguous, so I just treated it as "picking a 3rd party platform" and graded based on reliability of future existence. A number of platforms go down for various reasons (esp. freemium-based). Don't you want a platform that is mostly guaranteed to stick around while you use it?
• lpolovets 10y ago
  (I'm the post's author.) A few ideas: 1) Integrate w/multiple platforms if that's an option, so that you're not dependent on a single platform. E.g. if you are integrated with 10 messaging platforms it's better than being tied 100% to WeChat. 2) If you're using the platform for distribution or infrastructure rather than something like data or social networks, then you can gradually work on building infrastructure in-house or on looking for other distribution channels. 3) Offer something to the platform that they value so that they don't have an incentive to limit your usage. For example, maybe you can data sources that let you provide valuable analytics and insights to the platform when combined with the data and users you get from them.