What The Death of Parse Proves: It’s Not About Who Owns the Platform

by Anders Lassen, CEO and co-founder of Fuse

Facebook’s unexpected closing of Parse last week has caused quite a bit of anxiety among developers and startups around the world. Purchased by Facebook for just $89 million only two years (a modest price by Facebook’s standards), it seemed like a smart move by the company to have a stake in the future of third party app development.

Then, suddenly, it was gone.

As Ingrid Lunden of TechCrunch astutely observes:

I hope the industry sees this as a case study to learn from, because the move shows that even platforms backed by a major player are not always safe bets to be around for years to come. In the past, developers in search of a platform to commit their time and resources to have asked themselves, “Does this come from a large and reputable company that will be around in the future?” In that deliberation, startups are almost always at a disadvantage. But as last week’s news proves, it’s the wrong question to ask.

I believe the a more correct query is this: “Does this come from a company that has this project as its core value and competence?”

Or even more directly:

“Is this product as important to the people providing it as it is to me?”

In fact, I’d argue (with some bias, obviously) that massive companies are often less safe as platform partners, than startups. Facebook and Google are so huge, it’s impossible for them to give every project and platform owned by them the same importance and value.

Indeed, their strategy is literally to launch hundreds of initiatives every year, largely to see which ones gain traction — and then just as quickly, shut down whichever ones seem to be insufficiently growing, or for some reason doesn’t align with the current trends in the company. At the time of writing, neither the Parse team nor Facebook higher-ups have disclosed the reason for shutting down Parse, so we really don’t know why.

All of this is in sharp contrast to companies that have a clear focus on a single product or service, or at an even a deeper level, a singular way of thinking. While they will not always survive in an unpredictable market, I believe companies like these have a unique advantage that Internet giants rarely do: A fundamental alignment with the developers who want to grow with them.