Why We Invested in Measurlabs

The emergence of B2B platforms

The early 2020s have indicated that this decade will be the golden age for B2B marketplaces. Looking at their recent growth, we already see similar dynamics that consumer marketplaces experienced over the previous decade. Those developments are mainly driven by changes in the underlying infrastructure, such as advancements in B2B payments, logistics and embedded finance that make many processes more efficient and seamless. B2B platforms, even though many start as niche solutions, quickly acquire significant competitive advantages compared to alternatives, translating to high customer retention. With scale and network effects kicking in, many of them will become large and sustainable companies.

Market well-suited for a change

At VentureFriends, we are excited about large, underserved markets with significant information asymmetries. The legacy solutions delivering subpar user experiences only reinforce our interest. The outsourced Laboratory Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC) market is worth €27B in Europe alone. Pricing and speed of services vary significantly between providers, and the experience of ordering laboratory testing services is an opaque and underdigitized process. Ordering reliable testing services is mission-critical for any manufacturing company, and R&D-centric companies must make sure their materials are compliant and safe to use.

Promising early growth

Measurlabs is a B2B marketplace which significantly improves the process of ordering laboratory testing services. Based in Helsinki, the company has served 500+ customers from 46 countries, including startups and enterprises. Measurlabs taps into its curated database of 900+ labs across Europe. Those providers are selected to prioritise competitive pricing, speed, and reliability, which is a significant improvement from how this process has been done before.

Founders with a deep understanding of space

Teemu and Kalle, co-founders of Measurlabs, embarked on this challenge as a side job to their PhDs before hiring their first employee in 2020. They experienced the pains of their current customers first-hand, having been involved with validating outcomes of R&D processes themselves. They are obsessed with customer experience, which yields excellent results in high customer retention rates and a satisfaction score of 9.1/10. The two founders attracted a strong team of industry experts with a deep understanding of the testing needs of R&D-focused companies and have mapped out the European lab testing ecosystem in a high level of detail.

Funding to fuel international expansion

The company has already attracted hundreds of customers from all over Europe, however there are thousands more that would largely benefit from Measurlabs’ solutions. We see great potential in establishing sales operations on the ground across new European markets and further leveraging the technology for a higher level of automation of test ordering processes. We believe that Measurlabs is best positioned to become the leader in European testing services, delivering significant value to hundreds of R&D teams and laboratories.

Measurlabs is actively hiring across functions. Check out their open roles here.