Platform Risk

Depending on another company's platform, API or app store that can change the rules.

Also known as: platform risk, platform dependency, building on someone else's platform

Platform risk is dependence on someone else’s platform — app stores, social graphs, marketplaces, cloud APIs — that can change rules, pricing or access overnight. Platforms giveth distribution and taketh margin: every business built on one rents its foundation from a landlord with other priorities.

benefits:  instant distribution, trust, payments, users where they are
risks:     30% cuts, API shutdowns, algorithm shifts, policy bans, clone-and-compete

Manage it, rarely avoid it — early distribution is worth the risk when the alternative is obscurity. The discipline is optionality proportional to dependence: direct customer relationships (emails, not just followers), multi-platform presence, key features reproducible elsewhere, and revenue mix that survives any single cutoff.

The classic mistakes:

Single-platform existence. 100% of users, revenue or acquisition through one gatekeeper. Diversify before forced to — the cutoff always comes as a surprise.
Ignoring ToS evolution. Platforms tighten steadily (API pricing shocks are the modern genre). Read terms as living documents and model fee/rule changes as scenarios.
Building the platform’s roadmap for them. Features that compete with the host getSherlocked — adopted natively, leaving you stranded. Avoid head-on overlap with host incentives; differentiate where they cannot follow.
No direct relationship. Followers you cannot contact, customers you cannot email. Harvest owned channels (email lists, communities) from day one, whatever the platform.
App-store single-threading. Review rejections, policy sweeps and commission changes hit mobile-first startups hardest. Web fallbacks and direct distribution hedge the gatekeeper (app releases).

The question: “what breaks if they change the rules tomorrow, and how long to recover?” If the answer is existential with no plan B, the platform owns your company — act accordingly before it acts first.