>Another was building a platform for financial apps...It was only after I tried building a platform myself that this reached the top of the list for "things sta

>Another was building a platform for financial apps...It was only after I tried building a platform myself that this reached the top of the list for "things startups should never do"...I guess lots of other founders haven't yet learned that either. You're saying that startups should never create platforms, should never create webapp platforms, or what? Personally, I would say that startups should never start off by building a platform. They should build a service, which can be expanded / redesigned into a platform later, as more services are discovered that work well with it. But at all stages, you must have income paying the way and / or customer feedback justifying it.