Article · 5 min read, then hours of reading

Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays at andrewchen

Andrew Chen · andrewchen.com Free Advanced

Chen ran growth at Uber and now invests at a16z, and this is his curated shelf of the twenty essays worth reading on marketplace GTM, organised by chicken and egg, trends, product strategy and network effects. Rather than send you one opinion, it gives you the reading list a marketplace leader should have already worked through.

  • It is a curated reading list of 20 essays with short intros, not one original argument.
  • Marketplaces evolve in three stages: connect buyers and sellers, own delivery, then own supply.
  • Narrow by geo, niche or vertical to break the chicken and egg problem.
  • Liquidity is measured with GMV, net revenue, gross margin, repeat orders and concentration.
Open on andrewchen.com ↗

The question it answers

  1. We are a marketplace, not a software product. What actually changes about GTM?

Read with it

  1. Nineteen concrete launch moves, drawn from NFX advising sixty plus marketplace startups, rather than another abstract essay... NFX Article · 20 min read 19 Tactics to Solve the Chicken-or-Egg Problem and Grow Your Marketplace James Currier
  2. The clearest account of the choice at the heart of Indian marketplace GTM: matchmaking versus full stack. It shows what Urban... Tigerfeathers Article · 30 min read A Spotlight on Urban Company Paavan Gami
  3. A marketplace GTM decision taken to its conclusion: dropping commission entirely in 2021 and monetising through ads and... Tigerfeathers Article · 40 min read The Meesho Must Go On Rahul Sanghi and Paavan Gami
  4. Video · 40 min Masterclass #7: Lessons from Myntra on how to build a long-lasting marketplace Mukesh Bansal
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