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The marketplace bet: every Avery user becomes a creator.

· Avery NXR

Software companies have two ways to grow: get more users, or get more from each user.

We think there's a third way that most SaaS companies miss: turn your users into your product.

What a marketplace actually does

Think about what happened when Notion opened templates to community creators.

Users started publishing their own templates. Other users installed them. The template library exploded from Notion-authored to community-authored.

The mechanics:

  • Notion built the platform once
  • Users created thousands of templates over years
  • Users found solutions for their specific problems (created by other users)
  • Notion's addressable market expanded because the product now solved specific niches Notion never staffed for

The marketplace turned users into a distributed R&D team.

Why this fits Avery specifically

Avery agents are inherently shareable. If I build an invoice-chaser for my SMB accounting practice, my configuration + prompt engineering + tool integration is theoretically useful to hundreds of other SMB accounting practices.

Currently, that value dies with me. My clever agent lives in my Avery. Nobody else benefits.

A marketplace changes this:

  1. I build the agent
  2. I publish it to the Avery marketplace
  3. Other Avery users find it, install it, use it
  4. If it's paid, I make money (creator sets price, we take 15%)
  5. My reputation grows as more users install my agents

Now my one-off agent becomes an income stream. Or an audience-building tool. Or a portfolio piece.

The marketplace flywheel

Once seeded, the flywheel:

  • More templates → more use cases visible → more customer signups
  • More customers → more potential creators → more templates published
  • More published templates → more revenue for creators → more creators join
  • More creators → more diverse templates → wider addressable market

Notion has been at this for 6+ years. Their template library isn't a feature, it's a moat. Anyone trying to compete with Notion has to compete with thousands of user-created templates that took years to accumulate.

We won't have 6 years of templates on Day 1. But if we start now, we have 6 years less than Notion 6 years from now.

What we're launching with

Version 1 (Week 12 — AppSumo launch day):

  • 30+ Avery-created launch templates (marketing, sales, ops, HR, founder, support)
  • Community publish button — any user can submit a template
  • Moderation queue (we approve before publish)
  • Free templates only (paid templates come V2)

Version 2 (Month 4):

  • Paid templates enabled (creator sets price, 85/15 split)
  • Payment processing
  • Creator profiles with portfolios
  • Ratings + reviews on individual templates
  • Featured templates section

Version 3 (Month 8):

  • Template categories with dedicated landing pages
  • Editor's picks + curator recommendations
  • Template packs (bundle multiple templates)
  • Creator payouts monthly
  • Analytics for creators (installs, revenue, ratings)

Why 85/15 revenue split

We modeled this against Notion (30% takeover after $1K), Figma Community (85/15 creator/Figma), Shopify Theme Store (70/30), and various Chrome extension marketplaces.

85/15 is aggressive on the creator side. That's deliberate.

Reason: early marketplace value comes from creators, not the platform.

If we take 30%, we look like Apple. Aggressive extraction. Creators might publish but won't invest deeply.

If we take 15%, we look like Figma. Aligned with creators. They invest in quality because the ROI supports it.

We'd rather have thousands of creators earning meaningfully than take a larger cut from a small number of dabblers.

How this changes the AppSumo launch

The marketplace changes the AppSumo pitch:

Not: "Buy Avery, get 30 templates."

Yes: "Buy Avery, get 30 templates today + full marketplace access + ability to publish your own templates + earn from templates you build."

For an AppSumo buyer (agency owner, consultant, freelancer), this is meaningful. They can:

  • Buy Avery for their own operations
  • Build custom templates for their business
  • Publish those templates
  • Earn a small side income from customers who install them

The LTD purchase becomes a business opportunity, not just a tool purchase.

That framing converts differently.

The bigger bet

Every Avery user is a potential creator.

Some will publish 100 templates. Some will publish 1. Most will publish 0.

Even if 5% become active creators, that's a meaningful long-tail library that Avery couldn't have built on its own.

The bet: the community will build more agent value than Avery's team ever could.

If that bet works, we don't just have a product. We have an ecosystem.

Ecosystems are the moats that don't decay.

For founders considering marketplace mechanics

Not every product should have a marketplace. Prerequisites:

  1. User-created value must be transferable. If what your users build only works for them, marketplace doesn't work.

  2. Your platform must be worth building on. Users won't invest in creating for a product they don't trust to be around.

  3. Discovery must be solvable. A marketplace with 10,000 templates and no discovery is worse than no marketplace.

  4. Payments infrastructure must exist. For paid templates, this is real engineering.

  5. Moderation must be planned. Bad templates hurt everyone. You need a review process.

If you can check these 5 boxes, marketplace is one of the highest-leverage moves in SaaS.

Most SaaS companies don't check the boxes. That's why marketplaces are rare.

What comes next

Marketplace V1 ships with AppSumo launch (Week 12).

We're building it now. It's on the critical path — no marketplace = no compelling AppSumo pitch.

The 30 launch templates are our seed. The users who buy on AppSumo are our first creators.

Six months later, when we look at the template library, most of it will have been built by our customers. That's the vision.

→ avery.software — marketplace live Week 12.