Product

There’s a long term misalignment between everything apps (eApps) and the developers who build on their platforms.

The value prop to devs building on an eApp platform is distribution.  At small scale this is win-win: the dev gets audience and the platform gets activity.  Unfortunately if devs create something really successful on an eApp platform their next steps are adversarial.

If you’re a dev with traction, you’ll usually want to add features to your app and deepen the relationship with your users.  But eApp platforms are necessarily feature-shallow; they only expose functionality to engage on their own platform.  They don’t want users leaving their experience for another.  In the best case you’re constrained as a dev and in the worst case the eApp platform will copy your functionality natively into their platform to cut you out.

All this to say devs should be thoughtful when building for eApps.  Don’t build ON the platform, USE the platform for early distribution and testing.  Think about the path to convert eApp users to YOUR users (ie by collecting email/SMS), and take what eApp builders say with a grain of salt.

Everything apps provide a lot of value to developers, but it’s not in their interest to speak of the adversarial incentives.  It’s your job as a product developer to understand them.