Winner Take All

This week, we had the opportunity to sit down with Adrien Nussenbaum, Co-founder and CEO of Mirakl. With over 400 marketplaces powered by its technology and surpassing $6 billion in gross merchandise volume, Nussenbaum is an invaluable resource into the industry's trajectory and the future it holds.

From humble beginnings in 2012, Mirakl has become a driving force behind the B2B marketplace revolution. The company empowers businesses to create and operate their own online marketplaces, connecting buyers and sellers on a global scale. Mirakl has also launched additional product offerings around related value added services like financing, advertising, finding suppliers, seller operations, and product data.

Nussenbaum’s new book, The Online Marketplace Advantage, is a comprehensive guide to launching, operating, and scaling online marketplaces in today's dynamic eCommerce landscape. The book explores factors driving the exponential growth of online marketplaces and offers insights from 30+ leading brands that have successfully transformed their businesses.

In this interview, we sit down with Tyler Ellison, the founder of ChemDirect, a leading B2B marketplace connecting buyers and suppliers in the chemical industry. Tyler shares his insights on how logistics and supply chain services have been a key driver for ChemDirect. He also discusses the unique characteristic of having users who are both buyers and sellers on the same B2B platform. This interview provides a fascinating look into the world of B2B marketplaces and the challenges and opportunities that come with connecting buyers and suppliers in a highly specialized industry.

Alex Moazed speaks with Bar Geron, founder of Balance, a fintech company that focuses on digitizing B2B e-commerce payments by developing one-click checkout payment tools.

Balance was co-founded by Bar Geron and Yoni Shuster, who were former employees of PayPal, the company helps B2B e-commerce merchants and marketplaces to get paid instantly, process any payment method, and offer flexible terms. Balance has raised $87 million in total funding, including a recent $56 million Series B funding round led by Forerunner. The company works with hundreds of merchants and dozens of B2B marketplaces, targeting legacy industries not as digitally savvy in payments, including lumber, chemicals, steel, retail, and food. The checkout space is reflective of a new stage of the economy, where Balance is taking the next step in eCommerce for the entire supply chain, offering self-serve transactions in ways that were only previously available in B2C channels.

#fintech #b2b #startupfounders

In this interview, I speak with Fabrice Grinda, a founder of FJ Labs. With over a thousand unique investments made across different life cycles of FJ funds, Fabrice shares his Marketplace-centric approach to investing, and the importance of investing in extraordinary people who are trying to solve the world's problems. Fabrice also talks about his accidental transition from being a tech founder and CEO to becoming a VC and why he chooses to invest in network effect businesses and marketplaces. Throughout the interview, Fabrice discuss various topics related to investing in marketplaces, including investing in marketplaces all over the spectrum from B2C to B2B, both product and service-oriented platforms. This interview is packed with valuable insights for anyone interested in the world of marketplaces and VC investing!

Fabrice talks about how he believes B2B marketplaces are at the very beginning of their journey both in the US and globally. Fabrice highlights that the penetration of digital is very low in B2B and about how the entire supply chain needs to be digitized, including ERP integration, payments tracking, and how suppliers are involved. Grinda suggests that in some cases, the elasticity of supply and/or demand is such that a platform cannot have a take rate.

Fabrice suggests that there are many tricks to making B2B marketplaces work, such as offering a free tool to the supply side or demand side to help them manage their business better. Also highlighted, that monetization of B2B marketplaces may not come from the transaction of the marketplace component. Instead, B2B marketplaces may monetize through SaaS or by offering ancillary services for insurance, factoring, or logistics. Fabrice gives an example of a hairdresser and barber shop marketplace that grew to a volume of billions of annual GMV and monetized by getting an extraordinary deal on payments and sharing part of that discount with the barber shops.

#venturecapital #marketplaces #investorinsights

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In this interview, we speak with Rob Johnson, the President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, about the state of the U.S. economy in 2023 and the recent closure of Silicon Valley Bank. Johnson shares his insights on a range of topics, including:

- The overall health of the U.S. economy and its prospects for growth in the coming year

- The impact of inflation on consumers and businesses, and whether it is likely to persist

- The role of the Federal Reserve in shaping economic policy and its response to recent events

- The closure of Silicon Valley Bank and what it says about the state of the tech industry and the broader economy

Johnson brings a wealth of experience to these topics, having served as Chief Economist of the Senate Banking Committee and as a Managing Director at Soros Fund Management. He is a leading voice on economic policy and has been featured in numerous media outlets.

#economy2023 #economicpolicy #techindustry

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At Applico, we identify untapped, intrinsic assets that give existing enterprises an enormous advantage to spin-out new tech companies. WisdomTree licensed Applico's Platform Insights Data Product to aid in the creation of the PLAT ETF.

In this interview, I sit down with Sultan Meghji, a seasoned  entrepreneur and former Chief Innovation Officer at the FDIC. Sultan was  the FDIC's first ever Chief Innovation Officer and ended up leaving the  position and penning an op ed in Bloomberg titled: Why I Quit as FDIC  Innovation Chief: Technophobia. I talk with Sultan about the blockers he  ran into at the FDIC and what he witnessed as the agency continuously  jury-rigged 20th-century rules to cover 21st-century technology.   Get an inside look into Sultan's journey from his background in finance  to his innovative work at the FDIC, and gain valuable insights into his  thoughts on the future of innovation, crypto, and global leadership in  the financial sector.  

Why I Quit as FDIC Innovation Chief: Technophobia: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-22/i-quit-as-fdic-innovation-chief-because-of-regulators-technophobia  

#FDIC #Fintech #innovation  —  

📚 Grab a copy of the Amazon Best Seller Modern Monopolies: https://amzn.com/B017RC8CBC  

We open the show with a look at the ongoing turmoil around TikTok and parent company ByteDance. We look at what AI ChatGPT thinks of TikTok and at news that ByteDance is expanding into enterprise software offerings. Next, Twitter files have revealed that the Federal Government sent payments to Twitter. We look at the emerging evidence about these payments and ponder what Elon being Cheif Twit means for these arrangements. Also covered, the long term effects of the FEDs rate hikes and inflation now coming down, Amazon settling with the EU (sorta)", and an overview of how B2B distributors are looking at tech going into 2023.

00:00 - Follow Applico for the latest on platforms

00:38 - ChatGPT on TikTok

04:32 - ByteDance Expanding to Enterprise Software

05:46 - Why was Twitter paid by the Federal Government?

11:49 - Interest rates and inflation in 2023

19:23 - Amazon settles with the EU

29:08 - B2B Distribution Tech Survey

#techpodcast #b2bbusiness #2023predictions 

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I connect with Kristin Savilia to talk about JOOR, a platform that connects brands and retailers globally to deliver seamless digital wholesale management from connection to payment. Applico ranked JOOR #2 in our 2022 Top 50 B2B Marketplaces ranking.  

00:00 - Follow Applico for the latest on platforms

JOOR | The World's Premier Wholesale Management Platform - https://www.joor.com/ 

#Joor #fashion #wholesale  —

It's a packed episode with analysis of Amazon's complaints about regulation in India, YCombinator changing up it's president to Garry Tan, and Home Depot moving into B2B. Also covered in this episode, Reid Hoffman sticks by the blitz scaling strategy, and what Zuckerberg said during his visit with highly scrutinized podcast kingpin Joe Rogan.  

00:00 - Subscribe and fight big tech!

#BlitzScale #ycombinator #podcasts

The episode kicks off with an in-depth look at Farfetch's deal to buy  Yoox Net-a-porter from Richemont. The luxury fashion space is an  especially interesting vertical for platform innovation and there's a  lot of unpack and ideate on with this new deal. Next, news has come out  that Chinese tech giant Tencent is divesting its assets under pressure  of an economic downturn and aggressive tech regulation in China. We  close the show with a laugh at GameStop's newly launched NFT  marketplace.  

00:00 - Subscribe and fight big tech!

Tencent divestment strategy sends chill through China’s tech sector: https://www.ft.com/content/24f7b605-3052-4476-ae2d-a2d0028e70a4  

#businessnews #B2Bnews #platformbusiness  —