Marketplaces – Feasible to Build?

Partners differed on whether they thought Upstack landed in the same category as AppSmart as companies that want to offer a client-facing marketplace.

Moreover, Toth said Upstack currently lacks the resources to build such a system.

“AppSmart has more money than they do and an actual background in building marketplaces and is still struggling to get it off the ground,” he said.

Building the customer “portal to end all portals” would require major cash and massive buy-in from vendors, Toth said.

“Upstack would need to be bigger than currently constituted by at least a factor of three before they even think about doing this. I think their investors won’t pony up the cash for anything more than a series of acquisitions along with some nice-looking tools like Pathfinder,” he said.