Coates: Platform ecosystems fail if third-party apps cannot match first-party quality
Glen Coates · Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Mar 8, 2023 · at 20:53
Glen Coates is VP of Product at Shopify, leading developer platforms. He cites Apple's iOS ecosystem as an example of granting third-party developers parity with native apps.
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“One is you need you need an app platform that allows apps to be built that are of equal quality to the core features of the platform. That is absolutely critical. And like, look at iOS. IOS is like a great example of this. Like when I open up a first party app like Messages, and I open up a third party app like Spotify or Lyft or something. The third party apps are as good quality as the first party apps because they're all built on the same toolkit and Apple made the tools available such that third party apps could be as good as the first party apps in the most. This strategy does not work if the third party apps are all trash and it's only the first party apps that are actually good.”
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