Building in an Ecosystem: What Founders Often Get Wrong

A recap of a podcast hosted by Alevtina Labyuk, Chief Strategic Partnerships Officer at BeInCrypto, in partnership with The Top Voices — a community-led media platform for early-stage startups and IT talent, backed by a global network of 3,000+ entrepreneurs — featuring Anthony Tsivarev, VP of Ecosystem Development at the TON Foundation. Building a startup inside a large ecosystem can look deceptively simple from the outside. The distribution is already there. The infrastructure is ready. Millions of users are just one click away. But according to Anthony VP of Ecosystem Development at the TON Foundation, this perception is one of the biggest misconceptions founders bring into platforms like Telegram and TON. During the conversation, he explained why building inside an ecosystem is fundamentally different from launching an independent product – and why many teams fail to recognize the shift in mindset required to succeed. Ecosystem Distribution Is Not the Same as Demand In a traditional go-to-market strategy, startups usually follow a straightforward sequence: build a strong product and then acquire users through marketing, partnerships, or distribution channels. Platforms such as Telegram change this dynamic completely. The distribution already exists. But crucially, it does not belong to the startup. “You still need to build a great product,” Anthony explained. “But on top of that, you need to integrate it into the native behavior of the platform.” That means founders must think beyond functionality. A product launched inside Telegram needs to understand how people communicate there – through chats, channels, stories, and friend networks. Ecosystem products succeed because they naturally fit into how people already behave on the platform. For example, with TON, founders must design not only for user behavior but also for token economics, incentives, and payment mechanics. “Classic GTM is one layer,” Anthony said. “In ecosystems you also have social graphs, soci...