Article · 18 min read

Marketplace Supply Strategy: Comprehensive, Exclusive, or Curated

Casey Winters and Anne Lewandowski · Andreessen Horowitz 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.

• 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.