The OpenAI Platform Playbook

How Sam Altman is running the Microsoft–Facebook playbook and how to avoid getting your startup killed by it

This meme is becoming more recurring that I ever expected it to be.

I always thought it was just a matter o AI being so polivalent that startups without a MOAT, would be obviously crashed by the big models.

However, a recurring warning in the developer community is that OpenAI (and CEO Sam Altman) are running a familiar “platform playbook” associated with Microsoft and Facebook:

1. Open the platform just enough to attract builders,

2. learn what the ecosystem wants,

3. then consolidate the best-value product surface into the platform owner’s product, leaving third‑party developers commoditized, rate-limited, or displaced.

Jason Calacanis, frames this as the “Zuckerberg School of Business” (his phrase) and explicitly ties it to “Bill Gates and Microsoft” and Facebook’s platform history—urging developers not to build on OpenAI’s API.

In this newsletter I broke down:

1. The “Microsoft/Facebook platform playbook”: the mechanisms that made Microsoft and Facebook “dangerous dependencies” for developers,

2. Microsoft’s developer ecosystem playbook in the Windows and Office era

3. Facebook’s developer platform playbook

4. The OpenAI Platform Playbook

5. Practical caution for founders: how to benefit without becoming roadkill

1. The “Microsoft/Facebook platform playbook”

Image by Brian Balfour