Startup founder says he lost his company and $100M by relying on Facebook

I think we can all learn from this situation.

This is really a reason why companies need to diversify their source of income. Yes, the company was built around Facebook but as soon as possible the company needed to find multiple ways to get other income.

This situation is not new to the era of internet platforms. Companies regularly grow around a big business. It's great when both companies can thrive but the smaller company needs to make sure it's nimble enough to change at a moments notice or face the consequences when the bigger company wants to change the way they do business.

The way I see it no more than 10% of your income can come from one source, if you want to stay in business for the long term. Or, you need to extract yourself from the bigger company's influence and create a solid source of cash flow independent of any one customer.

In 2014 he should have already known about Zynga.

Platform risk has been known for some time, even before Zynga. Sadly growing on top of other platform is addicting, like Sirens for Oedipus.

On the one hand it sucks, but on the other hand a content farm shouldn't be worth $100m.