Platform Business: Strategy, Scaling, and Network Effects

In today’s digital economy, platform businesses are dominating the landscape—from food delivery apps to marketplaces, social platforms, and developer ecosystems.

Companies like Uber, DoorDash, Zepto, Airbnb, and Amazon have one thing in common: they’re platforms, not traditional businesses.

This course is your complete introduction to platform strategy, designed for product managers, entrepreneurs, business students, and tech professionals who want to build, understand, or work with platform-based models.

You’ll learn how platforms grow using network effects, achieve liquidity and critical mass, solve the cold start problem, and monetize through freemium, subscriptions, and transactional pricing.

Through real-world case studies (including DoorDash and Zepto), you’ll see how these principles play out in fast-scaling companies.

Here’s what you’ll learn inside:

• What makes platform businesses different from traditional ones
• Core types of platforms: marketplaces, developer platforms, content and social networks
• The power of network effects and how they fuel exponential growth
• How to solve the cold start and chicken-and-egg problem
• Platform liquidity and critical mass explained
• Growth and seeding strategies for early-stage platforms
• Freemium vs transactional monetization models
• Who to charge and who to subsidize on your platform
• Case studies: DoorDash, Zepto, Uber, and more
• Defensive moats and long-term platform sustainability

This course combines strategy frameworks + practical case studies to help you not just understand the theory, but apply it to real-world situations. Whether you want to work on a platform, build one, or invest in one—this course is your strategic launchpad.

No prior business background is required. The course starts with the basics and builds up to advanced insights step by step.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Design platform business models from scratch
• Understand platform mechanics and ecosystem design
• Evaluate and compare monetization strategies
• Solve early-stage growth and liquidity problems
• Think like a product leader in a platform business

Let’s dive into the world of platforms—and learn how to build the next big thing.