Marketplace Memo #9
Uber partners with Opentable, Solace raises $60M, Cargado raises $12M, Tinder AI Flirting Bot, Illicit Marketplace Does $24B, AppSumo is 15, Amazon Lets You Shop Your Photos and Much More!
Hi, it’s Colin! Welcome to the 87 new subscribers who have joined Take Rate since the last Marketplace Memo. I am excited to have you join the 3,280+ marketplace founders, operators, and investors who subscribe. Join the fun! 👇
👋 Welcome to the 9th edition of the Marketplace Memo. My goal is to share curated news, content, and stories I am seeing related to marketplaces with a splash of color from me. Please enjoy and share with others!
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Every Great SaaS Product Eventually Becomes a Marketplace
SaaS platforms follow a semi-predictable evolution. They start by solving workflow problems and become essential systems of record. They build deep hooks into their customers' processes as they capture business data and operations. This creates a foundation of trust and dependency, but the smartest SaaS founders don't stop there. They recognize that their position as workflow hubs creates natural marketplace opportunities.
Ryan's tweet perfectly captures the natural next step for successful SaaS products. Once you've achieved workflow dominance, you can leverage that position to enable commerce between users or third parties. We've seen this pattern repeatedly: Shopify (app marketplace), HubSpot (templates/apps/solutions marketplace), Toast (ordering marketplace). These platforms transformed from workflow tools into commerce ecosystems, generating massive additional revenue through marketplace models. The marketplace evolution isn't just a feature; it's becoming the expected path for any SaaS product that achieves true scale.
P.S. Granola is an excellent tool, and I am an avid user.
The Highlight
If you are like me, you had no idea what an MCP was until recently.
MCPs (Model Context Protocols) are emerging as a critical layer in the AI ecosystem, enabling large language models to interface with external tools, data, and services in a standardized way. As Jeff Weinstein's tweet suggests, we're now entering the era of MCP marketplaces where developers can discover, implement, and monetize these integrations.
These marketplaces will simplify access to a growing and increasingly fragmented ecosystem of MCP servers, acting as a unified layer for discovery, implementation, and payment. This shift mirrors the rise of app stores during the mobile era, unlocking distribution and monetization channels for MCP providers. As AI-native applications proliferate, MCP marketplaces could become the central commerce hubs for AI toolchains. It is very exciting, and the winners are yet to be determined.
If you are building an MCP marketplace, contact me at colin@yonder.vc!
News
"Flexport Misses Profitability Target" - The freight marketplace is extending the timeline to profitability on its path to potentially going public. The company has raised $2.3B and is likely looking to get investors some money back at some point. WSJ
"Klarna and StubHub Delay IPOs Because of Trump Tariff Turmoil" - The fintech giant and ticket marketplace have postponed their public offerings due to market uncertainty following the tariff announcements. Wah Wah. TechCrunch
"AppSumo Celebrates 15 Years" - The software deals marketplace has been going strong for fifteen years. It was originally founded by Noah Kagan, who shares his learnings about building the company in the article. Spoiler alert: Building a company is challenging but rewarding. AppSumo
"Uber and OpenTable Announce Strategic Global Partnership to Enhance Dining Experience for Millions of Consumers" - The rideshare giant and restaurant reservation platform are teaming up. This is an exciting play as OpenTable has a massive restaurant network and also happens to be owned by Booking.com (Dara’s old nemesis at Expedia). Here is more context from the Head of Americas at Uber Eats on the partnership. Uber
"Grubhub Revives Seamless Delivery Brand in NYC" - The recently acquired food delivery company is bringing back the Seamless brand in New York City, where it continues to have strong brand affinity and recognition. This is one of the interesting parts about food delivery: the first mover can often gain and maintain the market share simply by being first. Bloomberg
"Tinder Introduces AI Flirting Practice Bot" - The dating app is launching an AI bot that allows users to practice flirting before engaging with real matches. The video demo from the CEO is hilarious. Fast Company
"Ulta Beauty to Expand eCommerce With 'Curated' Marketplace" - The beauty retailer lost market share for the first time in 2024 and is looking to launch the marketplace to expand their offerings. Native corporate marketplaces are the trend right now. PYMNTS
"Goodwill Closes Online Marketplace GoodwillFinds, Leaves eBay Style Auction Site Open" - Apparently, the non-profit did $53.6M in donations sales in 2023/2024. RetailWire
"Amazon wants to turn your photo library into an online marketplace" - Amazon is integrating image recognition technology into its photos service to enable seamless shopping from users' photo libraries. This is a pretty cool idea; you can see the demo here. Business Insider
"The ‘Largest Illicit Online Marketplace’ Ever Is Growing at an Alarming Rate, Report Says" - Huione Guarantee, which might be Silk Road 2.0, has likely enabled $24B in gray market transactions for scam services. WIRED
“Rarible NFT Marketplace Shifts to B2B” - Some might read this as a pivot to B2B, but I see it as a move to a marktplace+ model in the form of a SaaS-enabled marketplace. X
Fundraising
Venteur raises a $20M Series A led by Informed Ventures and American Family Ventures. Venteur is a human-first healthcare platform focused on Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements (ICHRAs). Venteur
Solace Health raises $60 Million Series B led by Menlo Ventures and SignalFire. Solace is a healthcare marketplace for patient advocates. WSJ
Cargado raises a $12M Series A led by LGVP. Cargado is a marketplace for cross-border freight. Cargado
Ponte Labor raises a $3M Seed led by Harlem Capital. Ponte Labor is a labor marketplace for Hispanic immigrants to jobs using WhatsApp as the primary interface. TechCrunch
Hubble raises $800K Pre-Seed. The company is a marketplace for people to connect with experts and creators. I joined the platform and have already received my first booking! LinkedIn
Reads
"One strategic PLG bet now drives 60% of Maven’s leads 🤯." - Gagan Biyani shares how Lightning Lessons (30 min highly practical classes) became Maven's main product-led growth motion. This makes sense as people are time-constrained and like bite-sized learning before fully committing. LinkedIn
"The Evolution of Marketplaces" - This is a very in-depth post from Eric Flaningam at Felicis Ventures on the evolution of marketplaces and the dynamics at play. Generative Value
"Online Marketplaces: Beyond the Number of Buyers and Sellers" - This research paper from the University of Maryland suggests that marketplaces adding marquee buyers can benefit significantly if they have great supply. Still, having subpar supply can be very detrimental and cause revenue loss across the board. Smith School
"The Magic of Marketplaces" - A reflection by Deb Liu on her time building marketplaces, what makes them interesting, and what that might mean for the future with AI. Perspectives
"Autonomous B2B Marketplaces" - The SNAK team shares an interesting analysis of how automation and AI are transforming B2B transactions and making them autonomous. SNAK VC
"A Guide to Disrupting Incumbents" - This is an excellent read from the Euclid Ventures team on how to go about beating incumbents. Euclid Insights
Watch or Listen
“Starting Wonderschool As A Leading Child Care Marketplace With Chris Bennett” - Mike at Everything Marketplaces does a Q&A with Chris Bennett, the CEO of Wonderschool.
Marketplace Jobs
Digital Marketing And Community Manager - BioBuzz
Senior Product Designer, Growth - Bounce
Director, Financial Planning & Analysis - GOAT
Senior Software Engineer - Cargado
Account Executive - AppSumo
Full Stack Software Engineer - Recess
Partnerships and Mentor Relations Coordinator - College Contact
Lifecycle Marketing Manager - Leland
Growth Product Manager - Solace Health
Growth Marketing Manager - BizScout
Technical Program Manager - uShip
Want to see your job listed here? Email colin@yonder.vc with the subject line “Job Posting” to be included or get your job featured!
Thanks for reading!
That is a wrap for the week! As always, please email me at colin@yonder.vc with any missed feedback or news. Hot tips are always welcome. Please don’t forget to subscribe and follow me on X and LinkedIn for other great marketplace content. If you want to book a call, you can find me on Intro.
This week I want you to win…
AppSumo - The Biggest Marketplace for AI Tools
AppSumo is running a ChatGPT Plus giveaway, and you can win it for life! This is for their AI week from 4/21-25. Be sure to mark your calendars and sign up to see the deals! There are some great software deals coming.
About Me:
Colin is a marketplace geek and the General Partner of Yonder, a pre-seed marketplace fund that invests in marketplaces that create new economies. He has also been a long-time advisor to marketplaces, helping them with product growth, monetization, liquidity optimization, and strategy. Previously, he was the CPO/CRO at Outdoorsy and worked at Tripping.com, Ancestry.com, Justanswer, and the Federal Reserve.