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Leading a GTM team

We are a marketplace with buyers on one side and sellers on the other. Which side is the ICP?

Both eventually, but only one at a time, and it is whichever side is scarce. Pick the constrained side and make it your ICP for now, because the other side will follow liquidity and no amount of marketing will substitute for it. In practice that usually means supply early, defined narrowly (one city, one category, one kind of seller) so you can actually fill a page with real choices rather than a thin national list. The mistake is treating both sides as equal ICPs and running two half-strength go-to-market motions, which is how marketplaces stall with plenty of signups and no transactions.

Go deeper

4 resources, 2 India-specific, 4 link-checked.

📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Before you can pick a side you need the vocabulary: liquidity, constrained side, multi-tenanting, matching architecture. This is the reference that makes the rest of the marketplace literature readable.

The Marketplace Glossary

From Andreessen Horowitz by Li Jin 20 min read

  • Marketplace take rates run from low single digits to the mid-30s, driven by fragmentation, substitutes, and operational value added.
  • Liquidity is measured concretely: fill rate (match rate), market depth, and time to find a match.
  • Double commit marketplaces need both sides to opt in for a match, which is why Craigslist-style back and forth leaks transactions.
Open a16z.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Advanced

Once you accept that supply is usually the side to define first, this forces the next decision: are you going for everyone, for exclusives, or for a curated set. Each answer produces a completely different supply ICP.

Marketplace Supply Strategy: Comprehensive, Exclusive, or Curated

From Andreessen Horowitz by Casey Winters and Anne Lewandowski 18 min read

  • Three supply strategies: comprehensiveness, exclusivity, and curation, and you have to pick one deliberately.
  • Being neither comprehensive nor exclusive where variety of supply matters is almost always fatal (Oyster, Tidal).
  • Comprehensive does not mean 100 percent coverage, it means enough that users come to you instead of Google.
  • Curation works for a niche (HotelTonight optimising for speed and price) but is hard to defend against a well-funded rival.
Open a16z.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Beginner

IndiaMART started serving overseas buyers, lost that market after 2001, and rebuilt around Indian SME buyers posting requirements. A twenty year lesson in how a marketplace's ICP can flip sides and geography and still work.

Inc42 UpNext: How Looking Inward Changed Everything For IndiaMART

From Inc42 by Aditya Kondalamahanty 12 min read

  • IndiaMART's international B2B revenue slumped by more than half after 9/11, which forced the pivot to the domestic market.
  • It refocused on India in 2007 and became a buyer-dedicated forum by 2011, rebuilding the model twice.
  • By March 2018 it had 5.5 million supplier storefronts, 60 million listed products, and 59.81 million registered buyers.
  • FY18 revenue was 540 crore rupees (74.7 million dollars) with 46 crore operating profit, on 40,000 rupees of founding capital.
Open inc42.com →

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The same ground, at another level

How who you sell to reads from a different seat.

What is an ICP and how is it different from a persona? People use both words for the same thing. An ICP describes the company you want as a customer: size, industry, what they already use, what has to be true for your product to matter. A perso... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → How do I qualify a deal properly instead of just hoping the enthusiastic person can buy? Enthusiasm is not authority. Before you invest another hour, you want four things: a named pain the buyer can quantify, the person who controls the... Doing the work 4 resources → How do the best companies keep their ICP sharp as they grow instead of letting it blur into everyone? They re-derive it on a schedule from data they already have: which segments renew, which expand, which churn, which cost the most to serve. Then th... How the best do it 4 resources →

Terms in this answer

Ideal Customer Profile Go-to-Market Marketplace

People also ask

What is an ICP and how is it different from a persona? People use both words for the same thing. 4 → We have about fifteen customers and they are all different. How do I find an ICP out of that? 4 → How do I qualify a deal properly instead of just hoping the enthusiastic person can buy? 4 → Half my pipeline is outside our ICP because those are the leads that came in. Do I chase them? 5 → How do I get the team to actually use the ICP instead of nodding at a slide and then doing what they want? 4 → Should we sell to Indian SMBs, Indian enterprises, or skip India and go straight at US buyers? 5 →

Also in Starting Up

The same ground, over in Understand your customers, our Starting Up track.

How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear? 24 → What is an ideal customer profile and how do I define mine? 2 →
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