In our latest conversation with Josef Brunner, CEO of leading IoT platform relayr, we talked about key success factors for building a platform business. And he was clear right from the beginning that it is not about technology, it’s about focusing on outcomes for the customers and to understand market transformations. Only when you understand bigger trends and market shifts you can build a platform business to be ready at the right time at the right market.

Through a conversation with Sebastian Brenner, CEO of CheMondis, we explored how an incumbent company like Lanxess executed a platform strategy and launched the leading B2B platform in the chemical industry .

How to leverage communities to unlock network effects. Through a conversation with Adam Broadway, CEO and co.founder of platformOS, a leading innovation platform, we explore the role and impact of communities on growth and network effects.

In todays episode, Nathalie and myself are welcoming Malte Zur, Managing Director of testxchange.

testXChange is Europes leading marketplace for industrial testings and helps product companies to find providers for testing, inspection and certification services - revolutionizing the testing industry.

There are about 50.000 laboratories in Europe - about 7.000 of them are on the platform

Today we will talk about a special theme “Marketplace enabled SaaS” - so how a marketplace can be a complementary value proposition for SaaS.

We will also go deeper into chicken-egg problem solving for complex services, deeper value propositions then just “matchmaking” as a key for B2B platforms, blockchain and sustainability of course.

Let’s start.

Mercateo is Europe’s largest B2B platform; in this open discussion with Managing Director Lars Schade, we explored how the company unlocks network effects and leverages them to build defensibility against Amazon. Lars also shared with us how he leverages data and product information to give customers the possibility of more sustainable product purchases.