Ghost is simultaneously the best host for Minecraft AND Valheim AND Rust AND Palworld AND Counter-Strike. The lesson from a startup that didn't make it is explicit: "Horizontal products win if a specific audience encounters enough use cases that they want one tool to address them all." Gamers don't want one tool for all games — they want the best tool for their game. | Ghost hasn't chosen a bad payment solution — they've chosen a bad infrastructure provider for global reach, and that's harder to swap out than a Stripe integration. | A platform that asks you to manage your own token, your own billing, and your own Hetzner account while trying to serve ten different game communities across six regions isn't a product, it's a very pretty README.

Sources from Lenny's Newsletter and Podcast: The Subscription Value Loop: A framework for growing consumer subscription businesses (Newsletter), Lessons from going freemium: a decision that broke our business (Newsletter)