The idea was simple yet ambitious: a single platform with built-in finance, logistics and commerce workflows, fully customizable with code. Businesses with a team of developers could build and run a marketplace from scratch by connecting their applications to Nautical. After some early success, we faced challenges in attracting more customers. Our target market was too niche.

Nautical pivoted to a no-code solution, convinced that removing all technical barriers would unleash a wave of successful marketplace entrepreneurs. We poured our efforts into developing user-friendly interfaces so users could connect to their favourite apps and design their online stores—all without coding. Our goal: make launching a marketplace with sellers as quick and easy as possible.

Despite our efforts, marketplaces continued to fail, but not for the reasons we expected.