While many dream of creating The next successful application. Fluid interface, neat onboarding, ascending adoption curve. The product is king, use the judge, virality the arbitrator. But this model hides another way of building: Do not create an application, but an infrastructure. Not to seduce the end user, but structure critical processes. Be less visible, but essential.
Doctolib and Pennylaneembody this logic. Their ambition exceeds the product. They target the base. They are not only trying to integrate the daily life of professionals: they want Become the framework of whole sectors.
Doctolib: become the digital framework of the health system
Doctolib no longer sells an appointment service. It orchestrates a radical transformation of uses in the medical sector. By integrating teleconsultation, patient route management, online prescription, interoperability with hospitals, the platform has imposed itself as an invisible but structuring infrastructure brick.
It is not an app. It is an intermediate layer between patients, health professionals, public systems and business software. Once installed, it is not used punctually: it overlaps. It becomes the channel by which transit most of the non -clinical medical activity.
The startup did not need to impose its use. She captured the flow, then redefined the protocol. When a professional leaves Doctolib, it is not a simple tool that he abandons, but a rhythm, a logic, an implicit standard that structures his daily life.
Pennylane: Rewrite the financial grammar of SMEs
In another register, Pennylane continues a similar project. Far from being yet another management tool, the startup is attacking the Financial spine Small businesses. Automatic banking connection, accounting synchronization, invoicing, real-time management, direct integration with accountants: the product masks a more ambitious objective. Create a unified, normalized, modular and expandable system.
Pennylane does not try to save time. She seeks to reshape the way in which financial flows circulateconsolidate, declare themselves. The platform is not content to be used: it fits into the processes, transforms habits, moves the border between accounting production and strategic management. It becomes a dialogue interface between professions which, until then, worked in silos: managers, accountants, banks, administrations.
What they understood before the others
What these two companies have understood is that it is not enough to resolve an irritant user. You have to capture an entry point-the medical appointment, the invoice-then extend the range of service to absorb the system. It is not a question of improving a segment, but become the matrix of the sector. The solution is a Trojan horse: what matters is the depth of integration.
In both cases, the startup gradually imposes a logic of use, then a structural dependence. It is a slower, more demanding model, but also more defensive. Because an infrastructure is not copied. It is built, piece by piece, until it becomes too expensive to replace.
A new ambition for European startups
There is a strong strategic signal in these trajectories. Europe, long confined to subfunced B2C models or to too vertical solutions, Now produces sectoral infrastructures capable of establishing itself as implicit standards. Not by marketing, but by functional robustness and integration into the work chains.
Doctolib and Pennylane did not invent markets. They found dysfunctional, fragmented, ineffective systems. And they injected a common language, progressive automation, a logic of standardized interface. It is this ability to structure, not just to fluidifywhich changes the situation.
Emily Harrington
I'm Emily Harrington, a senior editor at Businesslife.co. With a decade of experience in business journalism, I've dedicated my career to uncovering the stories and trends that shape our global economy. Passionate about innovation and technology, I thrive on translating complex economic concepts into accessible insights for our readers.
