Marketplace, SaaS & Platform Development - Built by a Founder
Agencies build marketplaces for clients. With fainin I founded, funded, scaled and operated one myself - so I know which features an MVP really needs and which just burn budget.
Everything a marketplace really needs
I took these building blocks to production for fainin - as Vendure plugins, not concept slides.
Multi-vendor core
Seller onboarding, channels, commissions and payout logic - the foundation of every marketplace.
Trust & verification
KYC, two-sided reviews and insurance integration - without trust, no transactions between strangers.
Payments & payouts
Split payments with Stripe Connect: money flows automatically to sellers, commission to the platform.
MVP cut
The hardest discipline: deciding what does NOT go into version 1. Founder experience saves the most budget here.
From MVP to multi-tenant platform
BusinessDesk has been running in production for SME back offices for years; right now I'm building a multi-tenant US retail SaaS with in-store POS systems on Vendure. Multi-tenancy, roles & permissions and billing are architecture topics - not afterthought features.
fainin: founded, built, scaled
As co-founder and CTO I took Germany's largest P2P rental marketplace from idea to apps in the stores - 20,000+ users, 10,000+ items, every booking insured. No agency can give you this founder's perspective.
Open source instead of a licensed platform
Marketplace builders charge ongoing license and commission fees and take control of your data and roadmap in return. I build platforms on Vendure: open source, self-hosted in the EU, every business rule as its own plugin - your code belongs to you.
What does a platform cost - honestly?
Marketplace MVPs are typically offered from €25,000-45,000 on the market, with no upper limit. The honest answer: the price depends almost entirely on the feature scope of the first version. That's why I start with an MVP cut that deliberately drops features - something I learned as a founder on my own budget.
Frequently asked questions about platform development
On the market, marketplace MVPs typically start at €25,000-45,000; complex platforms sit well above that. The biggest lever is the feature scope of the first version - a clean MVP cut saves more than any hourly rate.
A marketplace or SaaS MVP realistically takes 3-6 months to first production use. Anyone promising less usually cuts corners on payments, security or the data model - exactly where it gets expensive later.
Yes, almost always. fainin launched with a fraction of today's features - only real users show which functions are missing. An MVP validates the model before the big budget flows.
Builders are good for testing an idea, but get tight with custom business logic, commissions and scaling - and the license fees run forever. Custom development on an open-source base (Vendure) pays off as soon as the platform is your core business.
Thinking about a marketplace or SaaS?
In the intro call you get a founder's assessment instead of a proposal PDF: what belongs in the MVP, what can wait, where the risks are.