If you are starting a SaaS/PaaS targeted at developers (such as a database, queue system, orchestration engine, etc), at what stage would you start looking at selling through channels such as AWS Marketplace? Would you wait until there are a couple (3-5) live customers, a few dozen, or later?

IMO, marketplaces are not important to individual developers. But they may be important to the “buyer” in their company. So you’ll probably add it when lack of marketplace becomes too much friction on the deals you are trying to close. I’ve seen companies who added this in day 0 and companies who were quite huge before adding marketplaces (Vercel is a recent example of the latter)

Got it, thanks! Looks like we'll keep focusing on "Managed service in Vendor cloud" and "Hybrid SaaS, Data Plane in Customer Cloud" for now

That’s plenty 😅

One prospect is adamant that "no data leaves our four walls"

I agree with Gwen on Marketplace not being critical path for targeting a developer persona early, but yeah, enterprise buyers will want it sooner than later, so I'd do some steps in anticipation of eventually listing: 1. Join the AWS Partner Network 2. Start the FTR (Foundational Technical Review) process 3. Register as a seller on AWS Marketplace (MP) 4. Learn about SaaS billing on MP Also, just to be clear, you can list Hybrid SaaS on the marketplace, as long as the customer owned data plane in on AWS. You should be able to kick this off by working with your account team, though you could self-service at least most of it.

Buying thru AWS marketplace can be considerably less friction than getting legal involved for a new MSA and finance/purchasing involved for a new vendor. If you're selling to someone fancy like a VP Engineering, it can often be a relief to short circuit internal bureaucracy and just buy thru aws marketplace. And if you're selling to eg the manager of the devops team, since it all just goes on the Amazon bill, it is kind of a sneaky runaround if they have access to the marketplace console... As a small startup you'd need to balance this easier frictionless path for users vs whatever headache it is to get listed on the marketplace yourself of course (and I have no idea how much of a pain that is).