PieceX — a “global first” source code marketplace, founded in Japan
We had the opportunity to speak with Yusuke Asano, Founder & CEO of One Act, the operator of the PieceX marketplace, and Chief Marketing Officer Marwen Sarraj about the evolution of the company founded in Japan with a “global first” mindset from the start.
The Origin
In its early days, One Act provided technology outsourcing and consulting services. That is where we have seen how difficult it is for small- and medium-sized companies to actually create quality software, and also how repetitive it is from one company to another. In 2019, we launched the PieceX marketplace.
Global First
With PieceX, even though we are Japanese startup, one very important thing for us was to be global from day one. We wanted to have a certain level of global infrastructure and also grow global talent. As as a company, our headquarters is Japan, and we now have offices in France, the UK, the US, and India. We are just over 20 people, with 13 different nationalities represented. It is something that we we love about One Act as a company. Sometimes it is a challenge, but it is a challenge that we love facing.
The Marketplace
As any marketplace with buyers and sellers, you have a bit of the chicken and egg problem — what comes first? Most of our buyers have tried out all different paths. They used outsourcing services, and they have seen how they lost their capabilities to scale those software solutions and to keep their ownership of those software solutions, while being locked into a specific vendor.
For companies that went the other route and used no-code or low-code solutions, they often suffer the most, because it is almost impossible to develop new features if the platform does not provide them yet. For them, it is a matter of keeping certain level of control of the solutions they built, as well as doing it efficiently.
PieceX lists over 1,500 products from different industries, built with various technologies and it is becoming easier and easier to find a match between the offerings and what companies are looking for.
With our marketplace, we have seen success stories where entrepreneurs have been able to get all the infrastructure for six different mobile apps, their web systems, and the administration side set up in just five days, instead of working with a vendor for six months.
What if it has not been built yet?
We want to be super transparent with our buyers and potential buyers to understand what features they are looking for. And if such functionality does not exist on PieceX, then we then we try to find it for them. That is why we have created the “Request” button on the marketplace.
Our our sales team will then reach out to you to fully understand your requirements, and then work with the highest-rated companies on PieceX to evaluate whether they have other source code not currently listed, or could create it on demand, possibly based on other solutions.
Use of AI
We are using AI primarily for the pricing of software components, going way beyond the sheer number of lines of code. We will generate an estimate and compare it to our own assessment, taking into account the software quality, but also external factors such as the scarcity of the features, availability of open source software, and the level of skills required to develop the solution.
We are mainly working towards achieving two goals: being able to have fairness of pricing for the buyers, and also increase the number of transactions and the profit for the sellers.
When we started PieceX, we needed to take on more products than we could actually QA fully, in order to have sufficient data to train our AI systems. Our initial focus was on getting as many products as possible even if they were not good. And we tended to learn more from the products that did not get accepted into Piece X first than the products that did get accepted. In a way that initial focus benefitted products that are at the higher end of complexity and value. That stage lasted about a year or so, until the algorithms were properly trained.
Effort of Adaptation
We typically see from 50% to 95% in time reduction if companies choose source code from PieceX. Naturally, you will need to spend some time to understand the code written by someone else.
However, what we find is that the common features in an industry make up about 95% of the code, while the truly differentiating features that are company-specific usually are no more than 5%. That means that companies today hire whole teams of software engineers to write exactly the same code they have written for the company next door, with just 5% of truly unique features.
So it is really obvious that spending 20% of time for understanding and customizing a piece of software that you have not written yourself is much better than spending 95% of the time writing exactly the same. So that is the value proposition PieceX is based on.
Still not having the technical skills in-house?
Even for companies that do not have the resources with the right skills, we have made it possible to contract directly with the company that sells the source code. For those customizations, e.g., you would like the application to work with a certain payment gateway that is not supported already, you are able to contract directly with that company to build that integration or that customizations.
Pre-viewing Code
We have a feature called “Code Insight”, through which you can see all all the dependencies that those products utilize, and can also view and inspect certain files, mainly to give the more technical people the capability to understand how that software has been written, and see the hierarchy.
As a software engineer, just from taking a look at the hierarchy, you definitely understand the design patterns that have been utilized to create that piece of software. If you would like to see a very specific file, e.g., you are building an Android app and you would like to see the gradle file, you could request that and it would be obfuscated in a way that allows you to understand how that product fits within your technical needs.
Quality Assurance
Our QA process is divided into two steps, with the first step actually executed by our AI system. This is mainly targeted to filter out early on unsuitable products. Code that is badly formatted, or which the documentation does not exist and all, for example.
Our QA team can then focus on the products that have better quality. Every product is rated across 10 different categories, with scores from zero to ten, and you need 75–80 points to qualify for a PieceX listing. For example, the QA team validates whether the code works as described, to guarantee certain standards for our buyers, so that they can transact without fear.
Software Mindset
As a startup, we have built our team in a way that basically everyone understands software. Even Marwen as the marketing guy actually has a master’s degree in mobile software engineering. This allows us to iterate quickly and modify our processes as required, e.g., if we need a different QA path for certain sensitive software, we can adopt that in an agile fashion.
Liability
As a platform, our role is to facilitate transactions, facilitate how people interact together and how companies interact together. PieceX is only the intermediary, but with an escrow function.
If you had bought a product, requested customizations, and both parties have agreed to certain list of features that haven’t been implemented reliably. Then One Act will make sure that either the seller would satisfy that list of of features, or the buyer would get a refund.
That is also why we incentivize our users to keep all their transactions on the marketplace so that the level of quality that we require from our sellers is ensured.
Virtuous Cycle
For many of our sellers, the platform is a new sales funnel, so it is imperative to them to do the work they are asked to do, and do it in the most professional way possible.
Our QA feedback, and feedback from the buyers also allows the sellers to improve. We have even seen products that were initially rejected, where companies put on the work required, and managed to meet our high standards for listing in the end. So everyone benefits.
Market Penetration
Software truly is the most global industry ever. It is even more global than the US Dollar. Everyone tries to utilize as much of the same best practices as possible. That is why it was imperative for PieceX to be global from day one, and why we built the team the way we build it.
Our sweet spot is with products that enable you to start new services, or to start new companies, new ventures, and those products are the most complete, but that also comes with the highest level of complexity as well.
We see the greatest impact for small and medium businesses, because PieceX can fundamentally change the way they build software. Our goal is that these SMEs, when they have a new project, they don’t create an empty folder with a “Hello World” as a starting point, but instead they check out the PieceX repository to find the basic building blocks of those software solutions that they want to create and build their innovations from.
Generative AI as a Competitor
We believe in Generative AI as an accelerator by itself. Software engineers can leverage GenAI to very quickly generate code for basic needs, on the premise that they are able to describe that need.
At PieceX, we are actually working towards integrating GenAI in the requirements definition process. It is a great tool to make the process of companies describing what they are looking for much easier. We have achieved that through a few integrations with OpenAI. We think it will help buyers be more specific, but we not expect it to do magic. We do not think that GenAI in its current form can deal with the degree of complexity that the source code on our platform implements.
Call to Action
If you are a company that wants to monetize its software assets, no matter which industry you are in, please do reach out to One Act. We are always keen to broaden our offering, and are especially keen to list more FinTech solutions as well.
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