A marketplace startup is a tough business, because you not only have attract buyers and sellers, you need to police scammers.<p>Even Ebay/Amazon doesn't have a handle on this completely and they ARE billion dollar marketplaces.
Can't this be summed up with making it super attractive for sellers (or the content creators) early on, grow really fast and then completely screw your content creators after you're somewhat established?<p>This is what it seems like for just about every marketplace. Marketplaces seem like one of the most corrupt / shady / backstabby lines of businesses I've ever been a part of. This is coming at it from a content creator on some video course platforms in the past.
I'm increasingly convinced that building a marketplace or a social network is the wrong way to think about it.<p>Rather it should be conceptualized as moving or consolidating an existing market or network.<p>The best ones actually lower the friction for socially beneficial outcomes.
Has anyone interacted with NFX and Gigi Levy-Weiss?
Especially with respect to seed/pre-A investing?<p>I have seen plenty of NFX ads on reddit and twitter, but I guess it just a PR push.<p>We are B2C, web-based, with some starting revenue, growing. But with out any "stars/reputation" on the team. So that's our main weakness.
Fabrice Grinda has some interesting content on YouTube and his website regarding marketplace/platforms. Does anyone know of any Shopify equivalent marketplace model that would enable one to build a niche version of Thumbtack?
I'm positioning SaaSHub as a "software marketplace"; however, I've been told it isn't a marketplace if there aren't financial transactions happening through it.<p>What do you think, could there be a marketplace without facilitating direct fin transactions?