HubSpot today announced the publication of a new report, The State of Platforms 2024, produced in collaboration with Canalys and Partnership Leaders. The report shares key findings on the platform business model, with data from the 50 largest software companies.
Today, platforms and their partners must strategically leverage ecosystems for customer acquisition, growth, and retention. The data collected for this report shows that the companies driving the most revenue have a thriving ecosystem of service, channel, and technology partners. According to leaders at McKinsey, ecosystems will drive 30 percent of the global economy by 2030.
HubSpot’s The State of Platforms 2024 report provides insights on leading companies’ reporting structures, the percentage of employees working in partnerships compared to sales and marketing, marketplace features, and the number of apps.
The report includes market data and insights on:
- The size of the platform ecosystems at the top 50 software companies
- App and services marketplaces
- Partner experiences and the monetization of app marketplaces
- The size of partnership teams and their reporting structures
Additionally, the report features contributions from leading executives, including Avanish Sahai, former HubSpot board member, Peter Evans, Chief Strategy Officer at McFadyen Digital, Laura Padilla, Partner and Head of Business Development at Sapphire Ventures, Meg Higgins, SVP of Global Partnerships at Avalara, Tim Tsao, Global Head of Partner Programs at Stripe.
Below are key data highlights from the report, collected in the second half of 2023.
Highlights from HubSpot’s The State of Platforms 2024 Report:
- The average number of apps in the 50 largest software companies’ marketplaces is 1,498.
- Nearly a third of top software companies have a unified app and services marketplace where a customer can find both a services and app partner.
- Nearly 50% of the top 50 software companies’ app marketplaces are transactional.
- The highest-ranking partnership leader only reports to the CEO 17% of the time.
- On average, the percentage of employees working in sales is 7 times higher than the percentage of employees working in partnerships, and the percentage for marketers is 5.5 times higher.
"Platforms drive the modern software industry, bringing cohesion to the stacks of apps on which organizations run today," said Scott Brinker, VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot. "We're excited to share this authoritative research on the platform business model across the world's top software companies to better illuminate how the platform economy is generating value for platforms, customers, and partners."
Download a full copy of the State of Platforms 2024 report here.
Report Methodology
The list of top 50 software companies was taken from ‘Apps Run the World’ Apps Top 500 Vendors list in July of 2023. This information in this report regarding apps, marketplaces, and employee percentages, was collected from publicly available sources, such as public marketplaces and directories, support documentation, and, LinkedIn. Partnership Leaders provided data on the top 50 software companies’ internal partnership team reporting structures.
