Video · ~35 min watch

How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business (talk)

Lenny Rachitsky · YouTube (Lenny Rachitsky) Free Intermediate

How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business (talk)

If you would rather watch than read, this is Lenny presenting the same marketplace research as a talk, condensed into the key decisions about which side to build first. It is a fast way to load the mental model before you start recruiting supply. Good background listening while you sketch your validation plan.

  • A condensed video walkthrough of which side to build first
  • Draws on how Airbnb, Uber, and Thumbtack actually launched
  • Focus on liquidity in a narrow market before expanding
Watch on YouTube ↗

The question it answers

  1. Can I validate a marketplace idea before I have supply or demand?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  3. Long-form, candid interviews with Indian founders and investors on how they actually grew, distributed and built brand, one of... The Neon Show / Neon Fund Podcast · 200+ episodes The Neon Show (100x Entrepreneur Podcast) Siddhartha Ahluwalia
  4. The definitive playbook for network and community-led products, drawn from Andrew Chen's a16z experience and interviews with... Harper Business Book · Book (~368 pages) The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects Andrew Chen
  5. Andrew Chen ran rider growth at Uber and now invests at a16z, so this is the canonical breakdown of how marketplaces get off... andrewchen.com Essay · ~20 min read Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays Andrew Chen
  6. Before you write a line of code, you can test whether a marketplace has a pulse by matching the first buyers and sellers... Learning Loop Article · ~10 min read Concierge MVP: run your marketplace by hand before you build it Learning Loop
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →