How can B2B marketplaces become end-to-end platforms?

As I mentioned earlier, I love these vertical SaaS solutions that solve some of the existing and potential challenges that the supply side has, or maybe demand, depending on the company. That's a way to get people starting to use a product in the flow, and then you layer marketplace in after. That’s not to say that all businesses start this way. Still, I do think that bringing the marketplace functionality too early can be a burden on the company, especially one that's not capitalized well.

That's why I go back to my earlier point: offer something with high intrinsic value and low marginal cost, start getting customers hooked into that workflow, and then expand into other parts of the workflow that leave you well-positioned to launch a marketplace. My personal opinion is that you need to be in the payments flow to be well situated to do so. I also think you want to see all transactions from either demand or supply, to get a better sense of what is happening ahead of launching the marketplace. That also gives you some indication of the type of supply or demand you need to bring into the marketplace to drive liquidity out of the gate.

We often see people starting on the demand side with a discoverability and presentation layer to help surface products and the unique supply you may have. How do you make it very easy for sellers to onboard very quickly on the supply side? That's everything from just being able to promptly upload SKUs and facilitate transactions to the actual operations of the marketplace.