venturecapital

Product

I’ve been thinking about marketplaces a lot lately.

One recent observation is that the value of a marketplace is often correlated to the potential upside for the supply side. For example, the average Airbnb ($72B) host earns way more than the average Poshmark ($1B) seller.

Potential upside is also often correlated to supply-side frequency and retention. A Door Dasher earning a part-time to full-time living on the platform is much more likely to return than a parent selling their kid's bike on Craiglist.

Interesting breakdown. I wonder whether this would extend to investing/fundraising marketplaces?

It’s not obvious to me that it would.

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I don't think the earning potential of the supply-side correlates with the marketplaces value. Many other factors drive value too (supply/demand interchangeability, Reed's law, competing networks, match rate, concentration/fragmentation, etc.) therefore it'd be hard to extrapolate the assumption to investing marketplaces.