Jeff Lawson – How to Build a Platform

...Software is creative. Code is creative. The best software developers I've ever met in my life are incredibly creative people. They're able to see some customer problem out there, and the first thing they asked themselves is 'Okay, so how could software solve this?'

I think that any of these groupings are really defined by three things: your heroes, your symbols, and your rituals. That's what defines a tribe ... For a company, really defining your heroes, your symbols, and your rituals come to be the defining elements of what it means to be a company, what it means to be a unique group of human beings that's different from the group of human beings occupying the office across the street or anywhere else.

Start with why. Aways be looking for ways to ask customers the reasons behind the actions they're taking. Don't let a salesperson qualify out a customer whose needs are slightly different than your platform [or] your product provides. Why? Because you might learn something by understanding why they need something different than what you built.

As our economy has turned into a digital economy... every company has had to become a software company and [has had] to start building software in order to delight customers ... If you are not a digitally-enabled company, you're going to lose your customers, so every company is starting to become a digital company.

Culture is what you feel when you walk into work every day ... Every company has a culture whether you've articulated it or not ... There's a feeling you have when you walk into the office, a feeling you have when you try to get work done.

How good you are at listening to them and building great products and great customer experiences—that is how customers judge you. That's how customers reward you with their business and their loyalty.

Human beings, we're tribal creatures. That's how we've survived for tens of thousands of years, basically, is by affiliating with some other grouping of human beings for our survival.

In the true sense of the word, a platform, to me, is something that allows customers the flexibility to really build the things that they need with developers and APIs.