Are you building a marketplace? An Uber/Airbnb for X?

I posted this reply in another similar thread here on IH:

Some of the challenges I've faced with early stage marketplaces and using Studiotim as specific marketplace example have been:

1. Talking to enough users/feedback- Speaking with enough supply and demand-side users to get enough feedback that can provide some direction to the core business, revenue models, etc quickly. It's easy to focus too much on particular feedback that might not be as relevant/indicative of your ideal and addressable marketplace market and make false assumptions. This has always proven to be very time consuming also.

In the case of Studiotime (www.studiotime.io), I was not initially immersed in the industry/market so it was not an easy process to speak with enough potential users, then first adopters quickly enough as the marketplace then began to rapidly gain traction and scale. I ended up making a bunch of business and revenue model assumptions that were then changed as I spoke with more people.

1. Segmenting/onboarding supply- Being able to segment the existing market on the supply side and understand the best messaging to use for outreach on the first supply users (speaking to their particular paying points), while also onboarding other initial supply with the addressable market. Also learning the potentially varying paying points and challenges faced with the supply users. This is particularly difficult when the addressable market is very fragmented.

With Studiotime, this was nearly impossible to do in the beginning as hundreds of studios created listings when press picked up our launch and there were studios that ranged from home studios in people's apartments to top-line and private studios.

1. Creating /scaling liquidity- Using a manual process to match supply and demand, then finding out channels, product features, etc that can be used to alleviate the need for a totally manual process and begin to create some initial marketplace liquidity.

In the case of Studiotime, we experienced a false growth/liquidity fallacy with too many listings that came with the press and not enough demand for them (due to supply variance, location, etc). I had to learn how to then create liquidity using manual processes, then try to automate this very quickly.

1. Platform slippage- Not being able to monitor all transactions from initial request or message due to communication and the transaction being taken off the platform. If there is slippage, it's always ideal to know why and how this can be overcome, but sometimes it's not always possible to identify.

With Studiotime, this was a huge issue in that a large number of transactions were being taken off the platform and I couldn't initially identify why from monitoring messages and transactions. I put a subscription in place for studios to list, which accounted for this and then focused on understanding why transactions were being taken off Studiotime and then fixing this issue. It ended up being not enough information/details on the studio listings for artists to book, the booking request flow, and some other product limitations with the initial MVP.

The above are just some of the challenges I've faced and some supporting insights with Studiotime as the marketplace example. Hope it helps others!

Hello, me and my team in Colombia we are doing a marketplace of services , as house cleaning, clothes washing, car was. But we are not sharing economic. We join the best companies of each service.

I did contract work for one. They were struggling for a while but are getting better.

They have a free tier to help grow the host listings, and then additional accounts for different pricing options (monthly fee + transaction costs). A lot of social accounts and outreach as well.

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