Comment by twotwotwo

I remember, when I was just starting, the founder of the company saying that if you tell him you're offering an 'engine' that's mostly saying you don't have an app. Of course, some successfully sell 'engines', but I think there's a basic truth that you need users to make your business work and make what you're building better and battle-hardened, and to get those users you usually have to be providing just what someone's looking for, and that often means making an app.

Some 'frameworks' or 'engines' budded off from work on a concrete problem, e.g. Django first for a specific CMS, Rails from Basecamp, Unreal Engine from Unreal the game. Work's not as much of an 'engine' as those are, but it's definitely turned out a big focus is on how customers can build their own stuff (both in the frontend and the data side) and integration. But for anyone to care about all that it has to be an app first!