What is Platform Design
Platform Design is a multi-month engagement in which Applico partners with the CEO, C-suite and dedicated client teams to identify the best platform opportunity and invest, buy, or partner options.
Our embedded team of proven team of entrepreneurs, investment bankers and technologists will manually hack a working prototype to prove out key aspects of the business model. At the same time, we will assess the landscape of potential partner or acquisition targets – such as existing platforms, incumbents or linear tech companies.
Through investing, buying, or partnering, we will provide your leadership with the best path forward to unlock the value from strategic assets inside your traditional enterprise with the creation of a new platform entity.
Identify Your Organization’s Dry Powder
Your enterprise has a lot of opportunities to choose from: which is the best?
Applico’s team knows how to identify intrinsic assets locked up inside of your corporation. These assets are extremely valuable to a platform startup. The long-term platform vision is more straightforward to figure out. The hard part is where do you start. By aligning the short with the long term, Applico’s team threads the needle to make your enterprise more profitable both now and in the future.
Validate with Prototypes and Partnerships
Now it’s time to get our own external validation by going out into the market. Our team of platform innovators include experienced entrepreneurs and operators who will launch prototypes to determine what is the best platform opportunity and how to capture it.
Example of Platform Prototype from Platform Design. For more, see here.
In parallel, our team will work with the relevant startups already gaining traction about standing up proof of concepts. The PoC’s will allow the enterprise to determine how well the startups can integrate into the core business and drive immediate synergies.
Output
By the end of Platform Design, you will have an action plan for your new platform business, including a go-to-market playbook, technical roadmap, resourcing needs, key business KPIs, and investment costs.
All of the outputs of Platform Design will be validated and based on live customer data provided by interactions with real users. To dive deeper about the concepts described here in Platform Design, check out our #1 bestselling book, Modern Monopolies.
