I saw this great article today from Arjun Sethi about how great companies are “people platforms”.

The whole article is spot on, some choice quotes below:

Companies that want to survive the next 10 years build software platforms. Companies that want to survive beyond that build people platforms.

When a company is racing toward product-market fit and trying to scale their product to thousands or even millions of users, it reaches a turning point. If it wants to compound growth, it needs to transition from a single product team to a people platform that can support multiple teams.

A people platform extends and amplifies the capabilities of team members the way a software platform extends and amplifies the capabilities of its products.

When you’re building a platform for your team, you’re parsing out the core functions of your company into an extensible architecture. You’re growing an ecosystem around your company and making it more valuable than the sum of its parts. That enables new behaviors to emerge between your people that allow you to save time and adapt to change.

The concept of a People Platform is very similar to a concept I explored few days ago in Systems of Impact):

In essence - startups are systems of impact - they provide leverage to an individual’s contribution so they can create the biggest possible impact. Organizations that are successful are excellent levers - they grow individuals, they provide them with the opportunities to exercise that leverage, and part of that is building great products and distribution networks.

The companies that grow to be successful in the long term are those whose in which leaders focus on excellenace across all domains of leadership, and build an repeatable infrastructure to do so.