I like the idea of a business that creates building blocks.

In other words, your product may not be directly useful to customers, but it allows other people to create useful products.

Amazon EC2 is a a building block.  So is Apple's App Store.  So are Heroku, WordPress, Paypal, and a bunch more.

Some things that are cool about building a "platform" or building block like this:

1. You're higher up the food chain
   The guy who makes a great iPhone app makes $100 thousand.  The guy (Steve Jobs) who makes the the App store makes $100 million.
2. You make other people rich
   If you make a great toaster, you can be proud of yourself in the sense that people enjoy your product and you've made their lives "richer" in some abstract sense.  But if you create Google Adsense, you've made a bunch of people richer in a very literal sense – they can buy groceries this week with the check you sent them.
3. It's the easiest sell in the world
   Telling someone "hey if I bring you an extra $100, would you give me $10 of it?" is the easiest pitch in the world.  When you make good building blocks they sell themselves.

In short, a good way to make money is to help other people make more money.  Could your business work better as a building block instead of a direct-to-consumer product?

Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong

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