Platforms 4 Future

How to leverage a marketplace to build a successful SaaS business

Through a conversation with Malte Zur we explore how testxchange, Europe’s leading platform for testing and certification, extended their marketplace business into a bigger SaaS. “Come for the network and stay for the tool” is a legitimate strategy, especially in B2B, to leverage the power of network effects in order to drive demand for your software business.

In our second episode of the “Platforms 4 Future” podcast, we had a conversation with Malte Zur from testxchange (www.testxchange.com), an online marketplace for testing and certification.

Just a marketplace? By far not, as a closer look reveals. Besides offering a matchmaking between companies and labs, they have also developed a software to help product companies coordinate their product tests.

Marketplace enabled SaaS platform –
Saas enabled marketplace

In the conversation with Malte, we learned that their business model started as a marketplace; but they quickly realized that the bigger problem in the market was not to find the right lab with a single click, but to get all those tests which are required for a final product organized (and that could easily be several hundreds of them). Each component of a product sometimes require different tests, and companies spend a lot of time just to coordinate — a big source of inefficiencies.

The vision absolutely comprises more than the marketplace, much more because we’re offering a real software for collaboration between those two parties of the market.

A SaaS enabled marketplace combines:

• A marketplace component that connects supply and demand to conclude a transaction andthus can generate and benefit from real network effects
• A SaaS (Software as a Service) component that offers software features to the parties

This combination has been popularly described as “Come for the tool, stay for the network.” by Chris Dixon.

Monetization Model

This combination of marketplace and SaaS expands the value proposition of the platform to two levels of our Platform Value Stack and enables testxchange to operate more than just one monetization model.

Malte Zur continues to explain:

It depends on the need of the clients: if we help the client to find a new lab, we monetize this with a commission model, so basically we’re matchmaking a lab to a customer. We also monetize in a classic license fee model, our software. If the two parties are looking for improving the way of collaboration, then we charge both sides to pay us their license fee for using our software.

This combination of relational and intelligence based monetization, offers a perfect mix of high margin business models. Interestingly, the SaaS is currently bigger than the marketplace business. Hence, the marketplace becomes an enabler for SaaS business.

Do you want to learn more about this topic? Check out the whole article or listen to our Platforms 4 Future podcast episode via your favorite streaming platform.

If you like what we do, please click the 👏 button and give us 20–50 claps to help others to notice the Platform Innovation Kit, too. Thanks!

And subscribe to our newsletter to receive bi-weekly updates, insights and curated links / videos regarding platforms and digital ecosystems.

And if you want to learn Platform Innovation, check out our trainings and masterclasses.