Online marketplaces - entering the next phase | Dealroom.co

The window of opportunity has largely closed, however, this is far from being the case for B2B marketplaces. Whilst consumers are able to order just about anything online, most businesses have not even started transacting online... That being said, I suspect that this category is where the next generation of outliers will be built.

When the pandemic began, we bought 16% of our things online. Now, we buy nearly 34% of our things online. That’s the kind of hockey stick growth investors like to see, and the ecommerce infrastructure companies’ valuations are skyrocketing accordingly.

After 10+ years of consumer marketplaces, we're finally getting there with B2B marketplaces, partly because today's business owners are getting increasingly tech savvy.

Looking at the ~$3T value creation in e-commerce over the last two decades, one might feel that the best of e-commerce is behind us. However, in Amazon lingo, I believe we are still on Day 1. Current penetration is still low (~17% in US). New categories are coming online such as grocery and pharmacy.

We believe that new and upcoming B2B players now have the tools to overcome historical constraints, and that large B2B commerce aggregators will emerge over the next decade. Further, given the complexity of B2B transactions and the different vertical requirements (think aerospace vs. chemicals vs. apparel vs. food), we think vertical marketplaces c... See more

The online opportunity lies mid-market (for now). Pre-covid, the distribution of transaction volume online is skewed towards the middle, while most of the high-value sales still happen offline. Just 1% of the >100k€ artworks are sold online, yet make up for 23% of the value.

Many of the perceived Covid winners such as e-commerce, videogame and streaming media companies have simply been pulled a few years forward into a future that was inevitable. Their destiny did not change. The future for those businesses simply accelerated whereas the future for category leading “brick and mortar” retailers has changed dramatically ... See more