How To Build A High-Growth SaaS Marketplace

Forbes

2 days ago

Bharath Balasubramanian, Director of Product Management, AppExchange at Salesforce.
A successful marketplace is more than a directory of products. If it's built in a way that helps customers find solutions faster and enables partners to build, sell and scale efficiently, it can unlock a substantial channel for revenue growth. But too often, companies take a 'build it and they will come' approach, and can struggle to gain traction if a marketplace lacks clear value, on both the demand and supply side.
I've worked with several organizations trying to create partner marketplaces on top of existing SaaS platforms. In each case, the question wasn't how to build one, it was why would anyone use it? That mindset shift is essential. A marketplace isn't about what you list. It's about the ecosystem you enable. B2B Software marketplaces are a rapidly growing channel, expected to account for 10% of all global enterprise software purchases by 2030.
Here's what I've learned about what it takes to build a software marketplace that works.
Start With Demand
Every marketplace has two sides: supply and demand. Most companies begin by overinvesting in supply, trying to recruit partners before proving that there's a customer base worth building for. That's a common misstep.
In reality, partners will only invest if they see evidence of customer interest. They're weighing trade-offs. Do they build for your existing platform or for one that already has a larger audience, more data and faster time to value?
That's why it's critical to start by creating customer engagement first. One way to do that is by offering native or homegrown solutions in the marketplace that fill obvious white space—tools that help your users solve simple problems without needing custom development. These kinds of starter solutions build habits. They also help validate a platform's potential.
Once customers are active, engaged and searching for more tailored solutions, you have a much stronger case to bring to potential partners. You're not pitching them an empty storefront. You're offering them access to a real, active market. There has been a 460% increase in unique B2B software marketplace buyers between 2020-2024, reflecting a growing interest in purchasing software through the marketplace channel.
Make It Easy To Publish And Iterate
Once a partner decides to participate, the last thing you want is friction. Getting a product listed and updated should feel intuitive and fast, not like a multi-week project with too many dependencies.
This is where self-service tools make a huge difference. In a study cited by The Future of Commerce with manufacturers, 46% of respondents reported that B2B portals significantly reduced costs and saved time. Vendors should be able to create listings, adjust pricing, respond to feedback and optimize SEO directly from a single publishing console. That console should also support iteration because most products don't land perfectly on the first try. Partners need to test, tweak and refine quickly.
One lesson I've learned is that self-service is not only convenient, it's a signal of how much you value your partners' time. If they're spending days waiting for edits to go live, they'll think twice about investing further.
Design For Flexibility And Scale
It's tempting to build a marketplace around one product type or solution category, but most platforms and strategies evolve. You may start with SaaS apps and later expand to APIs, connectors or AI agents. If your infrastructure wasn't designed to accommodate that growth, you'll end up rebuilding more often than shipping.
That's why it's important to design your marketplace as a set of flexible services: licensing, publishing, search & discovery, order management, payments, fulfillment and analytics. Each should be able to support new product types as they emerge. Think of it like building a retail store with just the produce aisle open—but leaving space to add electronics, tools or home goods when the time is right.
This doesn't mean overengineering from day one. Start simple, but modular. Prioritize the most relevant product type first. Just make sure the backend can grow with you.
Build Tools That Serve Both Sides
Your marketplace should evolve so that it can serve everyone in the ecosystem. That means helping developers build confidently, helping customers find the right fit and making sure the entire system is trusted and secure.
A few building blocks that matter:
• A transparent, efficient security review process
• Licensing and commerce infrastructure that supports flexible pricing models, free trials and tiered plans
• Access to developer tools and documentation without up-front fees
• A community where developers can ask questions, share feedback and learn from each other
Customers also benefit from marketplace intelligence: better discovery, curated bundles and clear industry use cases. If you're offering solutions for healthcare, finance or logistics, you should be telling those stories, ideally through content that ranks well and speaks directly to real-world needs.
Marketplaces Amplify, They Don't Invent
A marketplace is meant to amplify value, not innovate solutions from scratch. It reflects what already exists in your platform: customer trust, product extensibility and partner opportunity. If those ingredients are missing, the marketplace will expose the gap.
But when the foundation is strong, a marketplace becomes a force multiplier. It accelerates innovation, increases customer stickiness and unlocks new revenue without compromising operating margin. It also shifts your role from being a provider to being an ecosystem enabler.
That shift doesn't happen overnight. But with the right focus on customer needs, partner incentives and scalable infrastructure, it's possible to build an ecosystem that grows sustainably.
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