Choose Your Fighter: How To Pick A Platform

Two strategies to solve your company's software needs

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After “how do I make a thing people will buy?” and “why is no one buying my thing?” platform and software questions are amongst the most common ones that I receive from readers and clients.

Unless you’re a nerd (👋🏻), you probably don’t want to spend a ton of time thinking about the technology that powers your business. You want it to do what it’s supposed to do, do it reliably, and do it without a lot of input from you. But you can only get to that stage of tech-as-background-noise if you pick the right thing from the beginning.

a squirrel picking software

Two Paths Diverge

There are two ways to choose a platform, software, or application for your business:

1. Start With Platform

2. Start With Needs

The technology you select acts as a forcing function: it will both create and limit opportunity. The right approach will help to maximize opportunity while managing limitations.

Platform Rules

Sometimes you’ll come across a platform or software or app or cool thing and want to figure out how to use it. Your friends are talking about it, your fave threadboi is sharing it, you just like the look of it, whatever. This is platform-first: you are seeking a use case for the thing, rather than fitting it to your needs.

Often, this is high-risk. New technology is an ideal place for your shiny object syndrome to take root. If you’re anything like me, your distracted brain will want to pause whatever any well-planned business activity you have on your plate to chase the squirrel.

Me anytime a new software crosses my path. Photo by Philipp Deus on Unsplash

That’s the risk: that your curiosity or tendency to be influenced will distract you from the actual work of your business. Short-term, this may be fine.¹ But, if you’re not aware, you can lose weeks to the activity, and develop the habit of investing in tech only because it looks cool.

Platform-first can be reasonable. If everyone is doing it, there may a chance that you should, too. Let’s say you want to create an online community. It’s a good idea to ask, what are the people I’m making this for already using? If your community members are business owners or corporate professionals, they probably use Slack. Slack may not have every feature you dream of for your community,² but if the people are already there, your community’s chance of success increases. They don’t need to download another app, or remember to go to another place, or really do anything extra in order to engage.

But what if everyone you follow is talking about Slack, and your people are on Discord? What if what you pick is best (or only) in a mobile app, but most of your people are going to engage while they’re at work on a laptop? ³ Don’t get noise from your peers and those you admire confused with the reality of your audience.

Another risk is that you try to shove what your company needs into a tool that does not meet those needs because it’s shiny and hip—or, perhaps more likely, it’s something you’re already comfortable with and it feels easier to use what you know.

A better solution is generally to start with those needs.

Needs Dictate Decisions

If you’re looking for a new tech solution, it’s likely because you have a need that is not being filled. Unlike the platform-first approach, need-first is organic: you’re trying to solve a problem, not invent a use case.

So you need to, uh, know what you need.

This is where the overwhelm begins, and I see folks default to platform-first. To keep going with our fictional online community, people will avoid answering what they need, and instead say “I’ve heard Circle is cool, should I use that?”

To which, I will respond: “What does your community need?”

“Well, I heard Circle does this cool thing.”

“But what does your community need?”

And we’ll do this until I win.

It’s hard to anticipate all of your needs when selecting a new software. I get it. But we have to try! It’s impossible to ask the right questions about the tool if you don’t know what you need from it.

Think of this as a brainstorming exercise: dream it up first, and then deal with reality.

Here are some thought prompts you can use to clarify your needs:

1. In an ideal world, this tool would do what? List out everything!

2. Which of these are non-negotiable? Which are nice-to-have?

3. Do I know of any tools that solve these kinds of problems?

Your needs may include specific features and results. They may also include price, or even company or personal values. In this method, only on step three do you start to think of platforms, softwares, and apps that you know of. You want to try to get clarity on your ideal solution before matching it to what is actually available.

The reason this matters is because every tool will have limitations, and if you don’t know your priorities, you will not be able to discern which tool is best.

Back to our community, we could imagine needs like a course feature, event RSVPs, ability to email or DM members, ability to charge, ability to use GIFs and emojis to comment, etc. Some of these needs are practical (if you want to host courses or recordings of live events, you need some way to do that), some are cultural (I know folks who must have GIFs or else!). This also allows you to clarify how important budget is to you. It may matter, but maybe it’s less important than finding certain features. Or, it’s the most important! Only you can say.

Leave Room For Magic

The needs list should not be considered inclusive of all things you may end up wanting, because you may not know everything that is possible. The needs list provides a target, yes, but leave room to be surprised and delighted. As much as I am a tech critic, I am often so pleased by softwares and platforms. There are brilliant people working on these tools, and sometimes they dream up features I haven’t imagined.⁴

this squirrel found the magic. ok yes I am not a big generative AI fan but tiny squirrel laptops was exactly what I needed to make it through today.

Find Your Fighters

Actually finding the tool you seek may be the hardest part, which is why so many default to platform-first. At least that way you know what the options are! But that does limit you, and you want to find the tool that best meets your needs, not the one that you just happen to have heard of.

Search is a good place to start. A string like “type of tool” + “desired feature” will give you some places to begin. I just searched “community platform that takes payments” and got a lot of solid results. Not surprisingly, the results included several platforms I know of, but it also has some I haven’t heard of. I’ve increased the realm of possibility! Immediately I notice that many of these results are SEO-bait blogs from platforms themselves comparing their product to their competitors. I’m not so interested in what one competitor has to say about another, but I am very interested in who they think their competitors are. This is a great, fast way to get a list of tools: the platform is basically telling you who is good enough to potentially take business from them.

Another hack for finding options is to use Zapier’s app explorer. Zapier is a no-code way to connect apps and platforms online, which means it has a huge list of active tools. You can search based on use case, or browse based on category. This has the advantage of prioritizing tools with Zapier access, meaning you will be able to use the tool’s data to create actions in other tools. Back to our community example, if we used Circle, we could see on Zapier that we can trigger actions in an email newsletter platform like ConvertKit. There are, of course, certain tools where this kind of action isn’t required, and Zapier wouldn’t be as useful. But for almost anything, you’ll want the ability to use a tool’s data to do other stuff, and Zapier can help you find options.

Finally, of course, ask people, keeping in mind all of the cautions from the platform-first section. Use recommendations to create a list of tools to test, not as a way to make a decision. You have to test the tool in order to know if it will meet your needs!

Try The Milk For Free

Regardless of which path you choose, do your best to thoroughly trial your selection before you make a commitment. Most platforms and softwares have free trials or a free tier that you can explore before purchase. Use it! Make sure you sign-up when you have time to test it to make the most of a free trial period. Many companies will also extend a free trial period if you ask, but best to make use of what is offered.

During your trial period, there are two goals:

1. Confirm the thing does what you think it does

2. Test the support!

First goal is easy. As much as you can, accurately set-up your use case to ensure that the platform meets your needs. This is another reason why you need your needs: you need to know what specifically to test. Please do not skip this step. The testing phase can feel like a time suck, but it will save you pain and suffering and money down the road. Find out now what the limits of the tool are so you can decide if you’re willing to live with them.

The second goal is an under-the-radar one but truly worth your time: experience the customer support process. As you’re testing, you’ll have questions. Utilize the tool’s support. This may mean navigating the support documentation,⁵ and should definitely mean contacting support directly via message, email, or phone. On occasion, if you haven’t purchased yet, you will only be able to talk to the sales team, or to no one at all.⁶ This is a bit of a red flag for me; the sales team will not be indicative of customer support. Try to get directly linked to the support team to ask a few questions. You want to learn how fast they respond and how effectively they respond. Depending on your technical abilities, the support staff can be the make-or-break factor.

Ok kids, you now have a process for how to think about finding and assessing a new platform, software, app, or other tool for your company. Use it! Save this post! Share it with a friend! Don’t get trapped using shitty software!!!!!!!!!

1. I remember one holiday season where I spent about two weeks building workflows in different project management softwares. It was great.

2. Though I recently got back on Slack for a consulting project and I reallllly like the new canvas feature! It’s like a little Notion doc in a channel. Brilliant.

3. Yes, mobile-first is key for many audiences. But maybe not for yours! Don’t assume; check your email and website analytics.

4. Hard to believe, I know.

5. So many folks fail to look at the support documentation, which means they don’t find the information they need, and they fail to learn if the information is communicated effectively. For most software tools, the support documentation will be your primary way of solving problems. Make sure it’s good! Documentation is often where the real feature limitations live, as well. Companies don’t advertise what they can’t do, but the documentation necessarily addresses those limits, even if only through omission.

6. If you can’t get around this, try to purchase month-to-month and do all of your testing in month one. If you like it, you can always upgrade to a yearly plan to save money.