MeasureMatch Business & Product Update (9 May 2023)  

James here, MeasureMatch’s Founder & CEO.

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of this update, I’d like to say thank you for your participation in the MeasureMatch marketplace. It means a lot to me and my team.

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A 10-Year Journey

Back in the summer of 2016 (nearly 7 years ago), when I was about to start working with a software development agency to build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of the MeasureMatch marketplace, I told folks around me that this venture would require a 10-year timeline to grow into something really special.

Why ten years?

To start, I was a solo non-technical founder. Crazy, I know.

And, I had no online marketplace design & build experience, outside of buying from a handful of them and having a few as clients during my digital agency days.

I had a pretty good idea there was a lot I didn’t know about what it takes to build this kind of business.

Here’s what I know now:

• Designing and building a three-sided, transactional B2B professional services marketplace that seamlessly solves for inherently high-friction buying, selling and partnerships experiences is full of incredibly tough challenges, but they’re solvable.
  
  
• Speed to market is important and exciting, but a high quality, scalable product is better. We’re firmly in the latter camp, which adds time.
  
  
• Good things take time, great things take longer.

The problems we’re solving, and the value we’re creating, are getting bigger and more exciting every day.

Although we’re just a team of 4, we remain fully committed and excited to create a marketplace platform of outsized value and scale, to produce incredibly important solutions and economic opportunities for each of our customers.

Let's see what we can do together as we approach the 10-year mark.

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10,000+ Service Providers

Amazingly, despite not doing any recruitment (like really zero), our budding marketplace will soon provide clients with access to more than 10,000 cloud software and data specialists in consultancies, agencies, systems integrators, and a fantastic population of independent consultants.

We'll formally announce that achievement soon.

And, given the growth we're seeing, we'll probably celebrate the next 10,000 before the end of the year!

Thanks to each and every Service Provider account holder. We're working hard every day to make the MeasureMatch marketplace a valuable service for you.

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A New Payment Processing & Financing Partner

We’re thrilled to bring Trustshare into the MeasureMatch marketplace to advance our KYC and payment processing capabilities, and introduce powerful financing services for clients, too.  

Our first Trustshare integration will be released this week and all features will be fully deployed before the end of May.

This is an important development. Here’s why:

• Identity Verification
  
  All marketplace participants will be required to go through a formal ID verification process. This is new, and, yeah, not fun, but really important.
  
  
• Governance & Compliance
  
  More not fun stuff, but necessary as we grow. Our governance and compliance cred will get a nice boost, which we need in order to serve larger organizations.
  
  
• Buy Now, Pay Later Credit Solutions (BNPL)
  
  Eligible clients in 12 countries, including the UK and US, will be instantly granted optional credit lines up to $/£/€ 250,000.
  
  
• New Payment Terms
  
  Eligible clients can choose 30, 60, 90 days or end of next month payment terms e.g. Service providers on 10 day or 30 day payment terms, can confidently work with clients on 60 day or 90 day payment terms, and get paid when needed.
  
  
• Escrow
  
  Service providers can seamlessly have pre-payments held in escrow until confirmed delivery of a milestone or at the end of a contract.

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The Partner Exchange Is Getting An Upgrade

Cloud software companies have a big problem.

More than 80% of partnerships with service provider organizations (e.g. consultancies, agencies, systems integrators), well, they fail.

A big part of the problem is centered on a misplaced expectation that service providers can, or want to, sell software products as much as they monetize professional services (i.e. grow their core businesses), which won’t ever happen.

While many software vendors talk up a “give to get” partnerships strategy, and some are making great strides, most can’t fulfill.

That’s where we’re coming in with a revamp of the MeasureMatch Partner Exchange.

The Partner Exchange will remain squarely on creating outsized economic opportunities for service providers, together with software vendors who want to fulfil on "give to get" strategies.

We still have quite a few things to build, but we’ll relaunch this summer, and we can’t wait to share it with you.

Lots More Coming by 1 September

We’re also working on a revamp of our [underwhelming] search experience, and we’ll completely rebuild Messages and Service Packages (finally!).

Fundraising

New private backers are helping us achieve a small fundraising goal of £250,000 / $320,000 by the end of May, including two MeasureMatch customers who invested in April. These funds will be deployed to hire 1-2 additional software developers and 1-2 salespeople (our first!).

If you’re an active startup investor (no first timers) and you’d like to take a closer look at the business we’re building and our investment terms, get in touch.

Thank You!

We couldn’t be here without you.

Get in touch for anything. You can reply to this message.

James Sandoval
Founder & CEO
MeasureMatch

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