- building a two sided market is probably the hardest thing you can do. a few weeks ago i organized a market place founders dinner. because i felt like there needs to be almost like an aa meeting type for those founders that have decided to build marketplaces. you know, like, and idon't know if you know
what a marketplace is butlike and etsy or an ebay or clarity, my startup. it's where you build a platformand you hope that people on the supply side and on the demand side come together to complete a transaction and get a lot of value from that. and the reason why it's so challenging is you've got both sides ofthe market to figure out. when you build a normal technology company
or you build any busines, you have a customer and you have a service and you deliver it. but with any marketplace you have that same concept times two. so, what i want to talk about is how do you do that effectively. i can only speak from my experience. i don't know if you'vechecked out clarity,
but clarity.fm wheremarketplace for entrepreneurs to get advice from experts, real world experts with experience, over the phone. to grow their dreamsand businesses forward. and we've completed over 250,000 calls in the last 18 months. it's been growing 30percent month over month. it's really taken on.
and the challenge thoughis in the beginning, is getting the fly wheel going, right. i mean everybody that's tried to start they always say like, in thebeginning how do you start? here's my suggestions to you. number one, focus on one use case, right. so, for us it was marketing as a topic but also within marketing seo. so, if you're doing avacation rental site,
like an airbnb, vrbo, or homeaway, maybe you would start with treehouses. now that sounds crazy. but you might even startwith treehouses in europe or even within a specific city in europe. but really focusing ona very focused use case and even a product set, helpsyou streamline the experience. because if you're tryingto do too many things within a broader market
and something's kind of taken off, it's really hard tounderstand what is working. once you know what's working, then you can add on orstack on, as i like to say. stack on is different tan gentle market so we started off with seo in marketing and then we added other types of marketing like facebook marketing, growth hacking, online marketing and content marketing.
and then from that,from a marketing bucket, we then tacked on businessdevelopment then sales. and we just kept expanding and expanding, whereas two years into it almost we have different, we havefour thousand categories and a bunch of different topics. that's the way i believe to start, by building a very focused use case, focused on doing one thing really well
and making it niche. sometimes people call ituncomfortably narrow as a niche. so, try to think, am ireally uncomfortably narrow as how specific thismarketplace deliverable is. the other thing that i would say is focus on the demand side. you know, a lot of peoplethey think ok well, i want to do this kind of marketplace. i need a bunch of supply
and supply is the peopledelivering the service. if it's buyers andsellers, it's the sellers. and i would argue thatit's better and easier if you focus on narrowoffering, to fake the supply or essentially pay the supply to be there. i mean uber was famous for, you know when they started their black car service they didn't have ten thousandblack cars signed up day one. they went to a company and said,
look, you've got twelve cars. how about i pay you tojust have them respond to these messages on thisiphone app that they gave them. and then that black carservice would just tally up all the drives and send them one invoice. and that was the beginning of uber, now a multi-billion, ithink they just raised that, 60 billion dollar valuation. companies started with that same concept.
so, fake the supply or restrict it to a very specific usecase, where you can control and deliver on that promise and focus on the demand. focus on finding the idealcustomer that has that use case that need, for your marketplace. you know, those are the two big things. and then the third thing i'm gonna say is i believe the world hasgone from a 1.0 version
of a marketplace, to a 2.0 to now what we're in a 3.0. and a 3.0, well, i'll start with a one. one was ebay, one was craigslist, where it was kind of a free for all. a 2.0 is more like a curated, very focused marketplace. with identity and privacy and trust. which would be more likean airbnb or an etsy
or kind of like where they'releveraging social trust to build liquidity in the marketplace. the third kind is what we're seeing now where essentially they'refixing the supply side of what you get. and that would be homejoyfor home cleaning services, uber and lyft for delivering, where i guess the way to lookat, is they set the price. whereas, in taskgrab itwould be a 2.0 example.
but a three is where you saylook, this is the offering. this is what we deliver on. we own that brand, that consistency. those people might be contractorsto us on the supply side. but we will own the experience. we will be responsible for that and the price is fixed. so, there's this consistent ever going ... i mean another example will be fiverr.
when you go to fiverr,it's like the name says it. how much is it gonna cost? it's five bucks, whatever you want. so, fiverr is an example of a 3.0. if you haven't checked outfiverr you gotta do it. i mean, you're gonna probablyspend the next three hours ... if you haven't been there, start watching some of the crazy videos. but, fiverr is an exampleof, here's an example ...
a 2.0 version of fiverr would be odesk. but what they said is look, no, we want to reduce thefriction and build liquidity. and they said everything's five bucks. everything's bought in this format. you know what you get. the person's offeringis exactly that thing. and when you take the first, all these strategies put together,
it really helps you build amarketplace with liquidity. one, focus on a very uncomfortably narrow niche offering. two, focus on the demandside versus the supply. and then third, figure out areyou a 2.0 or a 3.0 offering. and it's even easier sometimes to go three and maybe back to a 2.0. anyways, those are my ideason how to build liquidity in a marketplace is challengethat a lot of entrepreneurs
and founders are facing right now. and i hope that brought valueto you, leave a comment below. if the number one take awaysyou got from this video and i hope that you continueto growth stack your success and you live a passionate life. have an amazing day!
