Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
If you ran a restaurant and nobody ever ordered anything off the menu, you would not call it a success. Caleb Washburn uses that as a test for a platform team, and it takes about ten seconds to apply.
A restaurant surveys people who like food, works out what belongs on the menu, watches whether anyone comes back, and changes it. Or it closes.
Most platform users don’t get that. There is one menu, and you are going to eat this whether you like it or not. Ask them why they don’t just talk to the people providing it and the answer is: we tried, and the answer is always no.
The version that works starts differently. Not yes, but help me understand what problem you’re trying to solve. Then you end up with something people actually want to order.
The paper this comes out of, “Why You Should Treat Your Platform as a Product”,
June 2026 revision, free, no gate:
vmware.com/docs/platform-as-a-product-wp
Full episode: youtube.com/watch?v=g8n1hYFO1OE
Learn more about Tanzu Platform: vmware.com/products/app-platform/tanzu
If you ran a restaurant and nobody ever ordered anything off the menu, you would not call it a success. Caleb Washburn uses that as a test for a platform team, and it takes about ten seconds to apply.
A restaurant surveys people who like food, works out what belongs on the menu, watches whether anyone comes back, and changes it. Or it closes.
Most platform users don’t get that. There is one menu, and you are going to eat this whether you like it or not. Ask them why they don’t just talk to the people providing it and the answer is: we tried, and the answer is always no.
The version that works starts differently. Not yes, but help me understand what problem you’re trying to solve. Then you end up with something people actually want to order.
The paper this comes out of, “Why You Should Treat Your Platform as a Product”,
June 2026 revision, free, no gate:
vmware.com/docs/platform-as-a-product-wp
Full episode: youtube.com/watch?v=g8n1hYFO1OE
Learn more about Tanzu Platform: vmware.com/products/app-platform/tanzu
