Building and Investing in Marketplaces

The first mistake I see founders make is overvaluing their GMV growth while undervaluing net revenue & unit economics — again, retention (i.e. happiness) is what's going to keep your marketplace afloat, not just high GMV numbers.

After 10+ years of consumer marketplaces, we're finally getting there with B2B marketplaces, partly because today's business owners are getting increasingly tech savvy.

In other words, marketplaces are harder to get off the ground, but easier to scale, while e-commerce businesses are easier to get off the ground, but harder to scale.

Lenny Rachitsky’s research shows that the vast majority of unicorn marketplaces focused on tackling supply before demand. If you have an exclusive lock over supply, that can be used as a unique and compounding moat.

So to find a supply-side that fits the mold we’re looking for, seek out markets that have fragmented supply, but are also polygamous. Babysitting, for example, would not be a good sector because people in that market generally have monogamous relationships — families often have one babysitter, and their switching cost is incredibly high.