The Startup Playbook Podcast

Insights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors

Ep200 – Jason Wyatt (Co-founder & CEO – Marketplacer) on shutting down 8 companies to go all in on Marketplacer

My guest for Ep200 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Jason Wyatt, the Co-founder & CEO of Marketplacer.

Jason’s journey started with a bike marketplace called BikeExchange, the global success of this marketplace led to others wanting to create and launch their own versions of marketplaces. These opportunities led to him launching 8 Joint Ventures in different verticals.

Despite some success with this model, Jason saw a much bigger opportunity for this solution as a “platform” play that could scale and grow globally. As a result, he ended up wrapping up the JVs to go all in Marketplacer.

Marketplacer is a marketplace platform that allows enterprise companies to scale and grow their ecommerce operations, counting companies such as Qantas, Tesco and Optus as customers.

Marketplacer has quickly become a global leader in marketplace technology, powering over 100 marketplaces worldwide and facilitating billions of dollars in transactions. To date, they have raised over $85M from leading investors around the world.

In this episode we covered a range of topics including:

  • Why Jason decided to shut down eight different companies to go all in on Marketplacer
  • Lessons from launching, growing, and hiring globally
  • The importance of having strategic investors like Salesforce Ventures
  • and much more!

Timestamps:

  • 2:22 Jason’s background
  • 4:46 Business and sport experiences as a teenager
  • 10:58 Starting BikeExchange
  • 17:23 Where the conviction for BikeExchange came from
  • 23:35 Trying to launch into other verticals with The Exchange Group and how that led to Marketplacer
  • 27:31 Getting their first enterprise customers
  • 30:23 The decision to switch off 30% of revenue to focus on the bigger opportunity
  • 32:38 Having a productive board relationship
  • 37:05 Pulling yourself out of the day to day to see the bigger picture in business
  • 40:40 Finding and recruiting talent
  • 45:27 Expanding Globally
  • 51:54 Finding strategic investors
  • 55:43 Balancing business with family
  • 1:02:50 Getting through tough times, dealing with the loss of his father and brother

Our partners:

A big thank you to Bob Schwartz, Richard Hankin and Sam Salter for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar 

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned:

Jason’s links:

People mentioned:

Companies mentioned:

Feedback/connect/say hello:

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

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