Amazon's Launchpad is giving startups the very platform they've been yearning for

Amazon launched Launchpad in 2015 as an ecommerce platform that was dedicated to startups and it’s proving to be quite a success for the ecommerce giant. Business Insider reports that Launchpad was originally meant to be a crowd-funding site like Kickstarter, but research indicated that the space was already too crowded to be worth investing in. Amazon, however, realised that the bigger problem faced by startups wasn’t funds, it was getting their products noticed. To that end, Launchpad only sells and promotes products that are created by startups and approved by Amazon. To get approval, the startup must meet two criteria:

• The startup must be able to deliver products to Amazon’s warehouses within 30 days of receiving an order
• The startup must have received funding from venture capital (VC) firms, startup incubators, some sort of crowd-funding initiative or similar funding service.

Once a startup meets these qualifications, Amazon will inspect the offered product and if deemed worthy, will promote them on Launchpad. Keeping an eye on the myriad upcoming startups isn’t easy, but Amazon does this by keeping in touch with VC firms, startup incubators and crowd-funding sites. At the time of launch, Amazon had only tied up with 25 of such firms and was offering around 200 products. Today, that number has increased 5-fold and the number of products being sold has crossed 700. You will find the likes of Solyent, Anki, Nextbit and Sphero on Launchpad today. Amazon tells Business Insider that they’re very happy with the way things are panning out because they’ve created a win-win situation. Amazon gets their hands on the hottest startups and in-turn, startups get exposure as well as access to a global ecommerce platform.