A Platform Mindset - by Marcus Fontoura

Book Synopsis

A Platform Mindset is a leadership book that shows how organizations can unlock scale and innovation by combining long-term platform investments with a culture of collaboration, trust, and shared purpose.

Marcus Fontoura's career, and indeed this book, has largely been about the ethos needed to build powerful platforms. A tech platform is a reusable system that implements a core piece of functionality, such as identity. In this case, an identity platform provides a solution for users to log-in to multiple services. Developers gain agility when using platforms, as they don't need to implement the whole system from scratch and can focus on the new, differentiating innovations. A platform, however, is an external dependency. Thus, using a platform implies teams taking a dependency on other teams. This requires coordination and collaboration. It is impossible to build the large-scale, complex systems of today without relying on platforms and their multiplier effect to build a scalable identity solution once and reuse it many times in all the company's services. This means that modern technology organizations need to be highly collaborative, with all their sub teams interacting in an open way, in which ideas are generated, developed, and propagated in an environment that empowers the developers to be themselves and let their creativity flourish. Platforms are the seeds of innovation and require their daily dose of creativity and collaboration to blossom into the systems that impact our lives and society in a positive way. Fontoura truly believes we can create a better world through technology and a platform mindset is the foundation.

Review Quotes

Marcus is an incredible technologist who has been at the forefront of many industry-shaping technology innovations, from computational advertising to cloud computing to fintech. Through his book, Marcus takes us along on his personal journey of learning, insights, and growth as a tech innovator. This is a must read for anyone who is interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the inner workings of technology management. --

Marcus Fontoura's A Platform Mindset avoids the tiresome rhetoric of yesterday's leadership and management books to focus on what matters most in this digital age-supportive, inclusive work environments where creativity and innovation flourish to solve complex challenges for customers and the world. --

Marcus Fontoura's A Platform Mindset teaches us how to build inclusive organizations where people and teams thrive. Full of engaging stories and best practices, this book is a great read for anyone working or considering a career in technology! More than that, this book is a story of a leader learning how to architect a high-performing team and culture. Having learned from some of the best in technology, Marcus takes us on an exciting ride with some great views from inside the ropes. --

About the Author

Marcus Fontoura is currently in his second tenure as Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, where he works as CTO for Azure Core.

Most recently, he was the CTO at Stone (2022-2025), where he led the engineering organization, focused on building highly efficient financial platforms and an amazing engineering culture. He continues to serve as an advisor to the company.

Previously, in his first tenure as Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft (2013-2022), Marcus worked as the chief architect for Azure Compute and led the Azure efficiency team. Marcus also had posts at Google, Yahoo, and IBM Research.