Platform or Predator?

Joe's Nerdy Rants #80 - Weekend reads, podcasts, and other stuff

A wolf and its meal

I just returned from Snowflake Summit in San Francisco, where I spent most of the week working, meeting with friends, and gatecrashing a few sessions. Every big platform conference has tons of announcements. One of my favorite (albeit morbid) games to play is seeing which announcement will impact the platform’s partner ecosystem. Snowflake Summit announced a few things in the data space that got a lot of reactions. Openflow is a new data integration service baked into Snowflake. They also announced new dbt Core in Snowflake UI, a semantic layer, and a bunch of other stuff that had partner vendors concerned. I’m sure many drinks and awkward side conversations or venting sessions resulted from these announcements.

Like clockwork, these frenemy announcements happen at all major platform conferences. The story goes like this: You partner with a platform. You integrate deeply. You co-market. You celebrate the momentum. You’re successful beyond your wildest dreams. Then, a year or two later, you drop around a million dollars to sponsor a giant booth, send dozens of people from your team, and rent out a swanky place for a massive afterhours party. Then the keynote drops and…surprise! The platform launches its version of what you built. But it’s cheaper, bundled, and already wired into their platform. It’s not as good as what you sell, but it’s good enough. And just like that, you’re now competing with your strategic go-to-market partner. One day, the platform is your partner. The next day, they’re like a wild predator trying to eat you alive.

The incentives are too strong. Platforms don’t just want to enable the ecosystem. They want to be the ecosystem. Especially nowadays in the Great Data Space Consolidation, expect more M&A and the big platforms building adjacent and competing products. The game theory of this means platforms must check every box in the buyer journey, even if it means building something basic and displacing partners who do it better. In the end, every fragmented ecosystem consolidates into a monolith. The big eat the small and slow. But that doesn’t mean the small can’t adapt and survive or thrive.

I’ve got a very holistic view of the data tooling space, have great relationships with nearly all the players, and for many years have fielded various questions on positioning, marketing, features, etc. Having seen this story play out countless times and seeing friends get impacted every year, here’s some advice for vendors if/when a platform becomes a frenemy.

• Differentiate and spread out. Unless there’s a strategic reason, don’t go all in on one platform. Offer your product on multiple platforms. On-prem is also cool again, so I suggest having that too. Each platform has its quirks (cuz legacy), and the chance of every platform identically copying your offering is close to zero. Also, if 80% of your revenue comes from one vendor or platform, you’re vulnerable to acquisition (maybe this is your goal?).

• Own the user relationship. Don’t rely on a platform to carry your messaging, onboarding, or brand. Build your own motion. I can’t tell you how many times I see vendors being overly reliant on their platform partners, only to be burned when competitors start getting more attention or the platform has a change of heart.

• Make a product that users love. The platform offerings, especially on the edges, aren’t meant to be loved. They’re probably 80% of what most dedicated vendors offer in terms of functionality or UX, and are meant to check a box when someone looks at a list of features. You’re not a feature, and you’ve got an amazing product. Lean into this and build something that people will tell their friends about. Word of mouth is the most powerful way to get your product into the hands of loyal users. It’s also insanely difficult, especially in a crowded space. Speaking of which…

• Be intense about go-to-market, branding, and distribution. I see many vendors focused on building features and cool technology, but not spending nearly as much time or attention on go-to-market and distribution. You can have the most fantastic product in the world, but if nobody knows about it, it won’t matter very much. Most people don’t understand this, but your company’s brand is much more than your product. What are you about? Get your message out there. Invest in a strong dev-rel motion if it makes sense. Have a cool blog or podcast. Your brand is vibe you create in the marketplace. If you have a brand and product that people love, you’re in an extremely good spot where the competition is practically irrelevant.

• Watch platform roadmaps like a hawk. Don’t be naive. Assume overlap is imminent or act as if it has already happened. Do the scuttlebutt and ask around. The rumor mill is always buzzing. Plan your next moves before it arrives (see the above list).

I’m sure there’s more to add, but these are some of the biggest themes that come to mind as I write this morning.

Just know the game you’re playing. The platform that is buddy-buddy with you today may try to replace you tomorrow. Often, the best way to partner is to do so on your terms. Be a good-faith partner, but play your game.

If you’ve lived this (either as the platform or the partner), I’d love to hear your story. I’m doing more podcasts and writing on this topic, and your experience might help others avoid the same trap.

Until then, keep building.

Please listen to the audio above or on Spotify (or your podcast platform of choice).

Have a wonderful weekend,

Joe

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Thanks to Monte Carlo for sponsoring the newsletter

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Cool Weekend Reads

Here are some cool articles I read this week. Enjoy!

My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts · The Fly Blog

A bag of worries - by James Stanier

Diabolus Ex Machina - by Amanda Guinzburg

Building a Distributed Cache for S3

Adopting Docs-as-Code at Pinterest | by Pinterest Engineering

Harmel-Law's architecture advice process and fast flow

The hidden time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs

Are More Layoffs Coming? - OnlyCFO's Newsletter

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Upcoming Events

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Calling all Databricks Data + AI Summit attendees! Do you want a no-BS evening event where you can grab a drink and unwind from a day where you’re probably tired of hearing pitch after pitch?

Blue Orange Digital is hosting a no BS event on Tuesday, June 10th at 6 pm PT. You’re all invited.

Join us a casual and unfiltered evening, which an extremely rare treat in today’s hype-filled, jargon-heavy landscape.

Here’s what you can look forward to (other than delicious drinks):
- Hot takes from me on where data engineering actually is in 2025.
- A chance to connect with leaders building AI-native data stacks.
- Chill, small room vibes after a packed Summit day...not just another vendor keynote.

If you’re working in data, building with AI, or leading teams through both, this is the event for you.

RSVP here

Thanks to BlueOrange Digital for sponsoring this event.

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Utah Data Engineering Meetup, June 18. Register here

Iceland - Global Data Summit, June 23-24. Register here

Australia (Sydney, Melbourne) - Data Eng Bytes, July 24-30. Register here

US Tour - September TBA

UK - Big Data London, September 24-25. Register here

Montenegro - October TBA

Vienna - October TBA

Helsinki Data Week - October TBA

Paris - November TBA

More to be announced soon…

Podcasts

Freestyle Fridays - Platform or Predator? (Spotify)

Svetlana Tarnagurskaja - Building a Boutique Data Consultancy (Spotify, YouTube)

DuckLake w/ Hannes Mühleisen - Practical Data Lunch and Learn. June 4, 2025 (Spotify, YouTube)

Ash Smith - Data Products, Interoperability, Data Teams, and More (Spotify, YouTube)

Freestyle Fridays - So You Want to Work in Data? w/ Gordon Wong (Spotify)

Hamilton Ulmer - Instant SQL with DuckDB/MotherDuck - Practical Data Lunch and Learn (Spotify)

Gaëlle Seret - Change Management in Large Organizations (Spotify)

Freestyle Fridays - AI Denialism is Holding Back the Data Industry (Spotify)

Ryan Russon - Practical ML Engineering (Spotify)

Freestyle Fridays - What Does AI Do to The Craft of Dev and Engineering? (Spotify)

Laura McDonald - Navigating the Complex World of Enterprise Sales (Spotify)

Freestyle Friday - Navigating Data Strategy in the Age of AI w/ Dia Adams & Gordon Wong (Spotify)

Michael Drogalis - Building a Company in Public (Spotify)

John Giles - The Data Elephant in the Board Room, Data Modeling, and More (Spotify)

Zhamak Dehghani - Autonomous Data Products, Data Mesh, and NextData - Q&A (Spotify)

Freestyle Friday - Advice for 2025 Graduates (Spotify)

Jessica Talisman - Libraries, Knowledge, Shitty Tech Jobs, and More (Spotify)

Freestyle Fridays - “I don’t need to learn anything anymore.” (Spotify)

There are way more episodes over at the Joe Reis Show, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also available on YouTube.

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Joe Reis