The European startup ecosystem is witnessing a strategic shift in the way digital solutions are being developed, moving beyond merely creating appealing individual applications to building comprehensive infrastructural frameworks that underpin entire sectors. Two companies at the forefront of this transformation are Doctolib and Pennylane, both of which exemplify this new ambition by embedding themselves as indispensable infrastructural layers within healthcare and small business financial management, respectively.

Doctolib, initially recognised for its online appointment service, has evolved far beyond this role to become a critical orchestrator of digital transformation within the medical sector. It offers an integrated platform that combines teleconsultation, patient pathway management, online prescriptions, and seamless interoperability with hospitals and healthcare systems. This positions Doctolib not simply as an application but as an intermediate layer connecting patients, healthcare professionals, public institutions, and business software. The platform’s presence overlaps routine clinical and non-clinical medical activities, effectively redefining operational protocols. As noted in the report from businesslife.co, when a healthcare professional ceases to use Doctolib, they are not just abandoning a tool—they are disrupting an ingrained rhythm and logic that structures their daily workflow, signalling the platform’s embeddedness at a systemic level.

Parallelly, Pennylane pursues a comparable infrastructural ambition within the domain of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) financial operations. Representing more than just a management tool, it seeks to overhaul the foundational processes that govern the financial handling of SMEs. Pennylane connects banking activities automatically, synchronises accounting entries in real time, manages invoicing, and integrates directly with accountants. This creates a unified, modular, and scalable system that redefines how financial flows are consolidated, declared, and strategised. The platform serves as an interface facilitating dialogue and collaboration across traditionally siloed professions including managers, accountants, banks, and regulatory bodies. Its functional robustness aims not merely at efficiency but at transforming habitual financial operations by merging accounting and strategic management.

The critical insight underpinning these successful ventures is their approach to system integration. Both companies capitalise on a key access point—medical appointment booking for Doctolib and invoicing for Pennylane—and then methodically expand their service offerings, gradually absorbing larger parts of the sector’s ecosystem. This deep integration fosters structural dependence on their platforms, creating what can be described as a “Trojan horse” model of innovation. Instead of seeking rapid viral growth through flashy user interfaces, these companies build structural infrastructures that become progressively indispensable and challenging to replace due to their entrenchment in everyday professional practices.

Importantly, this approach marks a departure from the traditional European startup focus, which has often been limited to niche B2C models or narrowly specialised solutions. Doctolib and Pennylane demonstrate the continent’s emerging capacity to produce sector-wide infrastructural systems that achieve implicit standardisation not through marketing prowess but through functional robustness and seamless integration into core workflows.

In essence, these companies have not invented entirely new markets but have targeted existing ones plagued by dysfunctionality, fragmentation, and inefficiency. By introducing a common language, progressive automation, and standardised interfaces, they have contributed significantly to the structuring and optimisation of these sectors. The evolution seen in Doctolib and Pennylane signals a broader transformation in European entrepreneurship, aiming to rewrite the operational grammar of entire industries through infrastructural innovation.

Source: Noah Wire Services