zlacker

The insane amounts of money people have made building products on “other people’s kingdoms” suggests the author is wrong.

>>ed+(OP)
It's high-reward, sure, but the point is it's high-risk too. Look at everyone who was doing great in someone else's kingdom until the king kicked them out with no recourse.

>>joseph+oe
The author is making a moral argument and presenting it as if it’s a business argument. It’s not. Zynga still made boatloads of money, and employed thousands of people, before the rug got pulled.

The article does not specify good vs bad platforms. Is Apple’s App Store good or bad? Would the author not want to start Epic?

What about building B2B tools for Salesforce, or apps for Shopify?

Platform Risk is a form of risk that can be mitigated. Building on platforms is itself a mitigation for distribution risk.