My highlights from Platform Day 2022

We had been looking forward to it for a long time and what a party it was! On May 12th the TOBACCO theater in Amsterdam was bursting with energy thanks to Platform Day! Together with the Dutch Founders Fund, several sponsors and our community we look back on a great day and I would like to share my highlights.

Notable this year was the relatively large number of international guests from England, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland and Austria, among others. The day started with an inspiring conversation I had with Laurens Groenendijk, platform veteran and founder of Dutch Founders Fund. As founder of JustEat he knows better than anyone what qualities you need as a founder to succeed and how to attract investors.

Together with Laurens, we also discussed important trends in the platform economy. For example, platforms are increasingly using embedded technology for additional services such as shipping and insurance of purchased goods. There is also a trend of people paying after the fact. Take eBay Kleinanzeigen for example, which recently had the scoop on allowing C2C platform users to pay afterwards via Klarna.

Reverse supply model

You also see many platforms that respond to opportunities from the circular economy and the growing demand for sustainability such as second-hand platforms and e-commerce platforms that apply the so-called reverse supply model. Zalando, for example, offers the option to return previously bought clothes in exchange for store credit. The reverse auction model is also gaining popularity. Here buyers bid on a platform for second-hand phones that are returned to individual stores, for example.

In her keynote, Ela Osterberger (former Deliveroo) talked about how platforms can make smarter use of their data. For example, you can start with low-threshold data analysis in Excel. This way you can quickly gain more insight into various KPIs that you can better manage. After hearing her story you immediately wanted to get started, so inspiring! Mark Gombert, Business Consultant Payment Solutions at Royal FloraHolland, showed why platform organizations sometimes require complex structures and how you can use payments to make things easier.

Escape room

In the various breakout sessions, different topics were explored in depth. I gave a workshop about the new European consumer protection regulations. For example, what should you do as a platform to comply with the rules for fake reviews and how can you offer sufficient transparency to your users? Visitors who had not registered for a breakout session could visit the Escape Room where collaboration and getting to know each other better outside the setting of daily reality were central.

Roeland Dietvorst, Lead Behavioral Scientist at NN Investment Partners gave an interesting presentation on influencing people. He gave ideas about how platforms can better understand the behavior of their users with which product development and marketing can be optimized.

Platform Day 2023

The day ended with drinks, a DJ and the opportunity for visitors to informally chat. We look back on a very successful day and at the same time we look forward to the next Platform Day. The 2023 edition will have an even more international character as it will be hosted in Berlin or London. My preference goes to Berlin, but the battle is not over yet! Stay tuned for the date and location!