And, as highlighted by Shopify’s recent announcements, BiaB Platforms end up facing a key strategic decision: how do they enable businesses on their platform to grow?

Remain a Platform, or become an Aggregator?

The platform enables you to start a business.

But becoming an Aggregator can also lead you astray from your core focus and vision, and can upset the businesses that came to your platform to launch in the first place, precisely because they did not want to get aggregated down the road. The most successful businesses created on the BiaB platform could leave.

But it will face a key decision in the future on how far to go to enable its writers to grow their businesses.

There are three fundamental aspects to every BiaB platform:

Platforms facilitate a relationship between users and third-party developers. Aggregators, on the other hand, intermediate the relationship between users and third-party developers.

Do they remain a Platform, or become an Aggregator?

Today, Substack provides a few tools, such as the Share button, to grow a newsletter.