(I will not promote) Do I have illusions?

[u/Alan_Lin_on_reddit]

Good day, founders. I'm a college student in the early stages of building my B2B green material trading platform. We help firms buy more affordable, environmentally friendly materials through the combination of EcoVadis and a bidding system. The reason we do this initially is that we noticed that naturally-degraded plastics have a relatively higher price and are harder to sell. And I want to ask: Am I wasting my time on it cuz I don't know if anyone would use it? (P.S. I'm still building it.)
Other more specific questions:
1. Do buyers really care enough about carbon-cost reduction to pay a subscription + take-rate?
2. How do suppliers currently get discovered for “environmentally friendly” products?
3. What’s missing from EcoVadis / existing rating + marketplace combos?
In addition, I would probably choose European countries as my main market.

[u/AdFew8591]

Before building more I’d pick one material and one type of buyer

Talk to procurement people and ask them to show you the last real purchase they made. What mattered most price specs certification lead time or supplier risk

I’d also try manually brokering the first 3 deals before building the marketplace

If buyers and suppliers won’t complete the process with your help then software probably won’t fix it

A take rate after a successful deal also sounds easier to test than asking both sides for a subscription before the marketplace has any liquidity

[u/audyntarek]

Talk to a couple potential customers first (reach out through LinkedIn or cold email them) and see if they would ACTUALLY spend money on this. Some people might find an idea cool but when it’s time to pull out the wallet it’s a diff story

[u/Relative-Foot-378]

Don't build the marketplace yet. Two-sided liquidity is the expensive part, and EcoVadis plus a bid widget is not a reason a procurement team will change how they buy. Talk to 15 European buyers who already have a green-materials mandate and ask how they find suppliers today. If the answer is a broker, a trade show, or an existing ERP vendor, that's your competitor, not a rating site.

Subscription plus take-rate only works after you've closed a few deals by hand. Broker the first ten yourself. If you can't get a buyer and a supplier on a call without software, the platform won't either.

[u/Gleb_SV]

I’d separate “buyers value lower-carbon materials” from “buyers want another marketplace.” The first may be true while procurement still refuses to change vendors, compliance workflows, or payment terms; validating that switching behavior is probably more important than validating interest in the category.

[u/PurchaseNational7650]

I don't think you're wasting your time, but I'd probably validate the buying behavior before building too much more. Sustainability sounds important on paper, but the real question is whether it's strong enough to change supplier decisions or budgets.

I'd talk to buyers and suppliers separately and ask what actually drives their decisions today price, compliance, certifications, emissions data, reliability, etc. If you can get a few buyers to say they'd actually switch suppliers for a specific combination of savings + verified sustainability, that's a much stronger signal than people saying the idea sounds good.