Essay · ~30 min read
Lessons Learned Building Online Marketplaces
Fabrice Grinda Free Advanced
Grinda has backed over a thousand marketplaces, and his blunt take is that roughly 95 percent are demand constrained, not supply constrained, which sharpens the question of which side is really harder for you. He also stresses getting unit economics right before scaling, so you do not mistake a subsidised match for a real one. Read it once you have a few hand matches and want to pressure test them.
- Most marketplaces are actually demand constrained, test that assumption
- Confirm unit economics work before trying to scale
- Pick the genuinely harder side, do not assume it is supply
