Sunday, April 17, 2011

Every entrepreneur’s looming problem: Which platform?

So we had a great idea, we developed the core system for 4 months, raised money and even gathered our core R&D Ninjas. Like every startup our focus kept shifting both before we launched and before starting our   Lean circle. I don’t know if the more experienced founders face this problem (I’m quite sure they do) but we are now facing the biggest problem a startup in 2011 has -‐ on which platform should we build our service?
This question may sound a bit funny to some of you but trust me it isn’t. Ages ago (3‐4 years) it was very clear which platform to use for your startup – and for the majority of us the answer would have been “yourGreatIdea.com”. In 2011 all the different platforms are evolving at an exponential rate and you can’t ignore them. Just think about it: web, iPhone apps, Facebook apps, Android apps, Twitter apps, tablets and probably a few more I’ve left out. (BTW there is a really interesting video with Mark Zuckerberg talking about this,forward to 4:30).

So we are in the office brainstorming (playing Wi , but don’t tell our investors) and suddenly my co‐founder, Omri, is saying how great our product would be on mobile devices and starts talking about the advantages. Suddenly we find ourselves in a 2 hour debate discussing Yotpo’s Android app, the tablet version and so on. So we realized we can’t ignore all the platforms but on the other hand we are just 5 people and like many smart people have said: “Do one thing but do it good”.

Read more: TNW Entrepreneur