Should you position your startup as an “all-in-one platform”?

↳ You need a buyer trying to solve multiple use cases 🤹

💎 This is rare in B2B — unless you're selling to the enterprise with a buying committee.

Everyone wants to be a platform because they represent the most successful startups of all time.

(Stripe, Google, Canva , Meta, Intuit Mailchimp)

But founders misunderstand what made these startups so successful.

👉 They didn’t become successful because they are platforms…

They became successful because they were able to find product-market fit with an initial product…

🌐 And eventually added a suite of products that also found fit → to become a platform

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If these companies had started by positioning themselves as a platform, they would run into 2 big problems:

❌ There are too many features to build

These enterprise buyers have extremely high expectations.

Anyone who’s ever had to submit an RFP knows.

→ They want bells (SSO, custom integrations)

→ They want whistles (security certifications, ongoing support)

→ They also want things you won’t have like a large set of successful customers,

💢  Building all these things is EXPENSIVE.

But it gets worse…

❌ Selling and onboarding customers is long and complex

→ at least 6 months sales cycles (usually longer)

→ Extended rollouts with pilot projects (12-36 months)

→ Vendor certification processes

💢 Supporting all these things is EXPENSIVE.

So what happens to many startup “platforms”...

🔴 They run out of cash before they get all of this to work

🔴 Or they scrambling to raise more money BEFORE they even have product-market fit

So unless you are selling to the enterprise where they are actively shopping to solve for multiple business cases AND you think you have the cash and skills to support all these things…

🎯 Focus on finding fit with a single product.

You'll have an easier time finding product-market fit.

✅ The product roadmap becomes targeted on a core problem.

✅ Marketing programs will actually start working because it’s clear who’s buying and where they hang out.

✅ Your burn rate will be much more manageable.

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Gut-check time for founder’s building platforms…

💀 Are you trying to build a big platform in year 1?

◯‍◯‍◯‍◯‍◯ Or are you planning to sequence your success on your way to a platform?