Shifting From A Product To A Platform Mindset
Tags: platform, product, productmanager
Published: 2022-06-12 01:03:27

As product managers, we have to constantly redefine the value our products bring to the market and diversify pricing strategies.

This in many cases, is difficult to execute with just one software product. By definition, a product manager is responsible for the vision and strategy of a product. 

> Product vision focus on the value proposition and strategy focuses on the roadmap of how to achieve that vision. 

## In the case of Spotify as a use case

Spotify is a web based platform that allows music lovers to enjoy unlimited supply of music from their favorite artistes available 24/7, whilst delivering new content to keep them engaged and find new sounds. 

Users can listen to music for free or pay a monthly subscription for additional features. 

This is the heartbeat of the Spotify platform, but the subsidy side of its platform business. I say this because the largest offering on Spotify Premium is the individual plan, which is $9.99

## Spotify for Artistes
A service that allows artists to connect with their fans by delivering insights on who, where and how their songs are streamed. This provides data for artistes when doing their marketing, planning tours etc. 

> Spotify Ad platform
Spotify allows business to send targeted audio campaigns to users based on their location, interests and activity on the platform. 

> Spotify partners
Spotify grants distribution partners such as Ditto Music the ability to send music from artistes to their streaming platform. 

> 3rd Party Marketing Platforms
Spotify also allows marketing platforms such as Linkfire, Feature.Fm the ability to track streaming data analytics using tracking links for marketing purposes on platforms such as Facebook and Google.

From the above, you immediately notice how Spotify's value proposition is spread across the other products in its platform and how each works towards the platform vision and a total service of the music industry. This way, you cannot talk about a music industry without mentioning Spotify.

Stuffing your value proposition into one product leads to feature junk, value dilution and blurry product position which will be difficult to market. As a user, when you go to Spotify's streaming platform, you know what to expect. This keeps the vision in check and the strategy on point.

Fact is, if you build a stand alone product that has no connection to the existing tech ecosystem, you stifle your product growth and make it difficult to cross the mystical adoption chasm. 

Having a value proposition that meets the demands of all these users solidifies your value proposition and establishes your competitive advantage. 

Bringing this to African continent, I believe one of the product that has nailed the ecosystem growth mentality is Flutterwave. 

## Flutterwave Case Study

At its core, Flutterwave is a payment infrastructure. It allows users to perform financial transactions with users across the world. This transaction enables the exchange of value between various actors in the economy. 

It bridges the gap between banks, users and international remittance. This proposition as their MVP made sense, but in order to grow, they had to shift from a product to a platform. 

## Flutterwave Store

Users send money to exchange value. This value can be a physical or digital good or a service. Whilst Flutterwave gives developers the ability to integrate their payment gateway into their websites or apps through their APIs and SDKs, 90% of users, have no business hiring developers to flush out an ecommerce website and integrate their payment into the website. 

The intricacies of managing an ecommerce infrastructure, something which Jumia, the biggest ecommerce platform in Africa, has being able to do is not everyone. And the Flutterwave store is a solution to that problem. 

It helps you to list your products, set pricing, give discounts and manage your inventory. As a small business owner, that is what you need in most cases. 

From a product standpoint, the Flutterwave store falls on the subsidy side of the network effect. Flutterwave does not charge for its use, but it is one effective tactic to ensure product market penetration. 

## Virtual Cards
Virtual cards are an interesting technology. I am not an expert in the space but from a product perspective, I understand what is going on. 

Flutterwave like I stated earlier, is a payment infrastructure. This means that, when users receive money, Flutterwave has the ability to store it into the wallet until its is cleared by all necessary parties for eventual transfer into the target bank account. 

Whilst in the Flutterwave wallet, it now acts as an enabler for continuous relationship moments with the customer. By creating a virtual card, users can use their Flutterwave balance to fund their cards. These cards can then be used for online commerce, in the same way physical cards do. 

This way, the value keeps circulating in the Flutterwave ecosystem until it eventually makes it way out of the system. 

Whilst i am not affiliated to Flutterwave, using the product extensively and strategically brings me to the conclusion that some of these revelations are trade secrets and i will not like to expose them.

To conclude, one of the pillars of product growth is community enablement. But for a product to further its adoption journey and foster user retention, there must be a shift to ecosystem/platform enablement. Just as Youtube users create an audience to allow Youtube content creators to create content for youtube users to consume and data from this consumption is used by advertisers to create targeted campaigns, which is where Youtube makes its money, so must you as a product (platform) manager think of best ways to create and increase the network effect of your products and activate its growth.