May 6, 2021

Chicken-and-Egg: Starting and Scaling a Marketplace

By Get To Traction • Issue #24 • View online

Building a marketplace is almost like building two companies at the same time. Each side has its own ideal customer, user experience, and jobs to be done. While it’s generally best to start with the supply side, this feature article goes a big step further to show you how to constrain your marketplace to get the flywheel started. Like you’ve probably heard before, niching down on your target customers (and problem… and solution…) is a good tactic to get to traction.

~Diane

PS: Let me know if you’re interested in joining an early-stage startup mastermind group. I’m coordinating schedules.

Weekly Sprint - One Sentence Pitch: Describe your startup in one, succinct sentence. Some examples here. This is harder than it sounds so be prepared to work through several edits over time.

How Early Stage Companies Can Make Responsible Technology a Competitive Advantage

Tech entrepreneurs face a variety of risks that can later haunt them: from products used in unforeseen ways to weak security and changes in norms and behaviors. Unfortunately, it’s easy for early stage startups to ignore how their product could impact society in unforeseen ways.

500.co • Share

10 Steps to Validating A Business Idea

Ten steps that will take you from something scribbled on a napkin to being sure that you should start this business. Key: “You can’t sell something that people don’t want. Ask people what they want, then be the best at selling it to them.”

www.simonblogs.com • Share

How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business – Phase 1: Crack the Chicken-and-Egg Problem 🐣

Consolidated learnings into a sort-of-playbook to kickstart and grow a successful marketplace business. Insights from 17 of today’s biggest marketplaces, including Airbnb, DoorDash, Thumbtack, Etsy, Uber and many more.

www.lennysnewsletter.com • Share

Product Channel Fit > Product Market Fit

So many startups die before they get to PMF, so everyone’s focus is on minimizing the path to get there. What you need to consider even more (perhaps) is Product Channel fit. Think of ideas in this order Market => Distribution => Product

buildstartups.substack.com • Share

How To Implement The 9-Word Email In Your Marketing Strategy

If done well, the 9-word email works like magic. There are always potential customers among your stale leads. The strategy is a quick path to re-engagement.

www.benchmarkone.com • Share

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By Get To Traction

Get to Traction is a weekly newsletter for first time founders, early stage startups, and those grinding to get their products built so they can land their first users. Curated by a serial startup-er and local director of the world’s largest pre-seed accelerator.

Visit our Early Stage Startup Stack at www.gettotraction.com

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