Marketplace growth

Marketplaces need supply AND demand. Growth = solving cold start then building liquidity, then scale.

Cold start

• Pick a narrow niche
• Fake one side if needed (manual concierge, curated inventory)
• Grow one side first

Liquidity metrics

• Match rate
• Time to match
• Supply/demand balance

Network effects

Each new user makes the product more valuable for others, the moat.

What to do with this

• Pick one side to subsidize heavily at launch, trying to balance both sides at once prevents either from reaching liquidity
• Focus on a narrow geography or segment, marketplace liquidity compounds locally, spreading thin kills density
• Measure liquidity (not signups), "% of demand matched within X time" is the metric that predicts marketplace survival
• Once one side has critical mass, the other side pulls in naturally, be patient through the cold-start phase
• Network effects are the moat, but only once you reach liquidity, pre-liquidity "marketplace" is just two sides of a chat app