Fiverr's Road to 797% Growth: The Decision Frameworks Behind Their Success

Services-oriented marketplaces (e.g. FVRR, UPWK) primarily match supply and demand in services provided by humans. Because humans in a given field and market require a certain pay rate, less flexibility exists with respect to lowering the cost of a transaction (other than typical geo-based labor arbitrage). Instead, these marketplaces put an emphas... See more

Marketplaces win if they can more cheaply attract demand/supply then their competitors and are then able to extract the most value possible from the network without increasing churn. Upwork did this via the press. Fiverr did it via viral growth loops. Braintrust does it with crypto.

Friction of Supplier Sign-Up. Supplier aggregation is the easy part. Aggregating demand early in a company's growth is much more difficult and crucial than supplier aggregation.

Size of the Market Opportunity. The new online marketplace may not be able to cover large portions of certain industries. Some markets are not good candidates. Wit

... See more