Grow SaaS Without VC: Add a Marketplace the Smart Way

Most founders overcomplicate “two-sided marketplace” as if it requires a giant launch, a sales army, and a war chest. The reality is simpler: if your SaaS already creates reusable outputs (templates, reports, calculators, audits, dashboards), you can turn distribution into a product feature—and let that feature become your marketplace.

That’s why I liked the story Rob Walling shared in Startups For the Rest of Us (Episode 633) with Matt Wensing, founder of Summit. The core lesson isn’t “build a marketplace.” It’s: pick an output your customers recognize, then make it easy to publish, embed, and share. That’s how you grow without VC-level spend.

This post is part of our US Startup Marketing Without VC series: practical ways American startups drive leads and growth through positioning, content, and distribution—without depending on fundraising to paper over go-to-market problems.

The real bottleneck wasn’t the product— it was “what did I just build?”

Matt’s team had built something powerful: a low-code, spreadsheet-like tool on an infinite canvas (they used to position it as a “whiteboard that does math”). The app could model forecasts and scenarios. It worked. A small group of users loved it.

But the adoption pattern was brutal and familiar:

• A few users latched on and became power users.
• Most prospects hit the learning curve, tried to “click the Lego pieces together,” and bounced.
• Even people who liked the concept still asked a killer question: “Okay… so then what? What do I have when I’m done?”

That last line matters for bootstrapped SaaS marketing. If your product produces an output customers can’t easily describe, you’re forcing them to do extra cognitive work just to become interested. That tax shows up everywhere: demos, trials, referrals, onboarding, and content.

Here’s the stance I’ll take: novel categories are expensive. If you’re not funded to educate the market for 24+ months, you need to anchor your product in something customers already understand.

Repositioning isn’t a logo change— it’s deleting your own marketing

The shift Summit made sounds small (“forecasting tool” to “calculators/simulations”), but it wasn’t cosmetic. Matt described a painful truth: when you reposition correctly, you end up rewriting and deleting a lot of work.

Docs, tutorials, screenshots, and landing pages that used to make sense suddenly feel off. If your help center says “build a profit-and-loss blueprint on a canvas,” and your homepage now says “build a pricing calculator,” you’ve created friction and mistrust.

This is why so many bootstrapped founders avoid repositioning. It’s not the strategy—it’s the cleanup.

Why “calculator” worked (even though it felt too small)

Matt resisted the word “calculator” because it sounded diminutive—like a 9-key device. But that’s exactly why it worked: the word gave buyers a mental handle.

A strong positioning term does three jobs at once:

1. Recognition: “I know what that is.”
2. Imagination: “I can picture where I’d use that.”
3. Communication: “I can tell my team/audience about it in one sentence.”

If you’re marketing a bootstrapped SaaS, that third one is underrated. Your customers don’t just buy—they explain.

A good category term isn’t the most accurate label. It’s the fastest label to understand.

The marketplace move: connect makers to users (without forcing everyone to be a maker)

The breakthrough wasn’t “we need a marketplace.” It was a more practical observation:

• Some people want to build (a minority).
• Most people just want to use (the majority).

Before the shift, Summit was effectively telling users: to get value, you must become a developer on our platform. That’s like telling someone they can read your blog only if they learn to write.

So Summit built the missing bridge:

• A way for builders to publish what they create.
• A way for non-builders to use it without logging in.
• A way to embed that output on websites and member portals.

That’s the marketplace pattern for a bootstrapped-friendly SaaS:

• Supply = templates/apps/calculators created once.
• Demand = people who use them repeatedly across the web.

Unlike Uber, one “unit” of supply can serve thousands of users. That ratio is why this type of marketplace is actually feasible without massive funding.

Distribution becomes the product: embeds, branding, and lead flow

The most important marketing detail in the episode wasn’t the new homepage—it was the embed-and-branding model.

Matt shared an example: a mastermind operator embedded a “sales payback” calculator (how long it takes for a salesperson hire to pay back given commission and contract value). The operator didn’t build it; they simply embedded it for members.

And Summit’s kicker: those free embedded calculators include Summit branding (with an option to pay to remove it).

This matters for lead generation without VC because it turns every customer asset into a distribution channel.

Here’s what this model does when it’s set up well:

• Every embedded calculator is an evergreen landing page living on someone else’s domain.
• The tool is contextual—users see it at the moment they care about the problem.
• Branding creates a low-friction path back to your product.

If you’ve tried to grow a SaaS via content alone, you know the pain: a blog post can rank, but it doesn’t always convert. A calculator, estimator, grader, or interactive template often converts better because it’s doing work for the reader.

A practical bootstrapped playbook: “interactive content” that people share

For founders in the US Startup Marketing Without VC lane, here are high-ROI assets that behave like Summit calculators:

• Pricing calculators and ROI estimators
• Savings estimators (time saved, headcount saved)
• Readiness assessments (security, compliance, onboarding)
• Benchmarks (scorecards that compare to industry norms)
• Planning templates (launch plans, pipeline targets, capacity planning)

The key is to make them:

• easy to embed,
• useful without signup,
• and branded by default.

The hidden catalyst: a great website agency can force strategic clarity

Matt credited a strategic design agency for pushing the team into a deeper “before and after” story. The website project took longer than planned because it collided with repositioning.

That’s a common trap. You think you’re buying design, but you actually need:

• tighter category language,
• clearer target user definition,
• and a narrative that matches what the product now enables.

I’ve found a simple test helps here: If your homepage headline needs three commas, your positioning isn’t done.

Summit went from an abstract description (“whiteboard that does math”) to a concrete output (“low-code calculators/simulations”). That single shift makes paid acquisition, SEO, partnerships, and word-of-mouth all easier.

How to know if your SaaS should add a “marketplace layer”

Not every SaaS needs a two-sided marketplace. But many bootstrapped products accidentally have the ingredients.

You’re a good candidate if you can answer “yes” to 3 of these

1. Your product produces reusable artifacts (templates, models, dashboards, scripts).
2. A small subset of users are power creators.
3. Most users want outcomes, not a creation tool.
4. Artifacts can be shared without exposing customer data.
5. One artifact can serve many users (high supply leverage).
6. You can brand the shared artifact and track usage.

The first marketplace version should be boring

A bootstrapped-friendly marketplace starts as a publishing feature, not an “App Store launch.”

Your V1 is:

• a publish button,
• a public URL,
• an embed snippet,
• basic discovery (a templates directory),
• and a way to pay for unbranding.

That’s enough to create distribution loops.

What this means for marketing a startup without VC in 2026

In January 2026, customer acquisition is still expensive, SEO is more competitive, and buyers are overloaded with “me too” software. The advantage you can build without venture capital is a compounding asset that spreads itself.

Summit’s story is a clean example: a repositioning that made the product easier to understand, plus a marketplace-like layer that made outputs shareable and embedded—turning customer work into ongoing lead flow.

If you’re building without VC, this is the sort of move that changes your growth curve without doubling burn.

The next step is straightforward: look at what your users create, then ask, “What would it take for that to become a link someone shares?”

And if you want to see the model in the wild, Summit’s home base is: https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-633-building-saas-plus-a-two-sided-marketplace