Page - 92 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

capital, the market entry strategy, and the characteristics of its competitive posi- tioning. In the stage of problem–solution fit, the platform entrepreneur has the opportunity to explore existing alternatives of the solution with qualitative inter- views or based on a search engine keyword analysis. After the validation of the solution, theMVPversion of the platform is developed and early adopters can be interviewed to identify use cases thatmake them turn away from the platform.As suggested before, platformmanipulation, market interaction, and ecosystem gov- ernance are essential actions to create and capture value from theplatformbusiness model. The validation of the design of platformmanipulation, market interaction, and ecosystemgovernance to not only create value but also to capture value is the missing step to achieve a businessmodel fit. This is not a onetime fitting process but a continuous optimization of the businessmodel (Fig. 4). After achieving a business model fit, every entrepreneur should validate the international scalability of the platform business. Due to different competitive landscapes or environmental conditions (e.g., legal, political, or cultural), the scaling of platform business models often encounters obstacles. Here, too, the multi-sided platform character contributes to complexity. When entering new markets and regions, it is therefore also important to meet different requirements. While theuser behavior ofmobility seekers inGermany is presumablyvery similar to the user behavior in San Francisco, the supply side ismuchmore regulated. In addition, in the case of Uber, different cityscapes influence the localization of passengers and drivers, and the algorithms working in San Francisco can lead to problems in Berlin. Fig. 4 Locationof platformcharacteristics andplatformcontrolmechanismsonventure pyramid 96 L. Göcke and P.Meier