In this episode, we'll talk to Sameer Singh, an angel investor known for his excellent blog on network effects, Breadcrumb.vc, former Atomico Angel, and current venture partner at SpeedInvest.

We’ll discuss how Sameer evaluates marketplace businesses:

• Evaluating Network Effects: Sameer walks through his four-step evaluation process for marketplace investments, focusing on unique multiplayer interactions and defensibility.
• Challenges in Early-Stage Marketplaces: He discusses common mistakes made by aspiring marketplace founders, such as picking overly narrow markets or trying to tackle too many problems at once.
• Future Trends in Marketplaces: Sameer emphasizes the lasting power of network effects and we explore some opportunities driven by behavioral shifts, especially with Gen Z and AI technology.

A terrific episode, packed with valuable tips and sights. If you're building a marketplace or network effects business, you’re going to love this.

After a brief hiatus, Two-sided—the marketplace podcast is back!

I’m super excited to kick off season three of the podcast with a chat with Jose Marin of FJ Labs.

FJ Labs is considered the world’s most prolific angel investor: they have over 1,100 startups in their portfolio, including heavy hitters like Airbnb, Alibaba, and AngelList (and that’s just the ones beginning with the letter A). Jose has also been a marketplace founder himself. His marketplace DeRemate (eBay model for Latin America) was acquired by Mercado Libre, which today is a NASDAQ-listed company.

In this episode, Jose and I discuss:

• How FJ Labs has built its unique investment approach using their vast vertical expertise.
• The emerging trends in marketplaces FJ Labs are seeing in their portfolio, such as B2B digitalization and cross-border commerce.
• Some important things that early-stage marketplace founders should look out for.

I couldn’t have asked for a better opener, so dive right in!

Season three of Two-Sided is here, and we’re switching focus. After exploring the experiences of entrepreneurs and founders in previous seasons, we now dive into the minds of the investors shaping the future of online marketplaces. I chat with top marketplace VCs like Jose Marin from FJ Labs, Pete Flint from NFX, and Andrew Blachman from Marketplace Capital to uncover what they look for in startups, the challenges they see, and the trends to watch. Whether you're building or funding, this season is full of insights you won't want to miss.

In this special, one-off mini-episode of Two-sided, Sjoerd asks for your help and reflects back on the past ten years of building marketplace software at Sharetribe.

On January 30th, 2024, Sharetribe launched its best marketplace builder today on Product Hunt. We were featured as #2 Product of the Day! Thank you so much for your support!

With the new Sharetribe, you can launch a marketplace in a day, without coding. You can also extend it infinitely with code. And scale to any size.

Create a Sharetribe account: https://www.sharetribe.com
Check out Sharetribe on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sharetribe-2

Follow Sharetribe on

• LinkedIn: Sharetribe
• X (Twitter): @sharetribe
• Instagram: @sharetribe
• Facebook: @sharetribe

In this final episode, Sjoerd looks back at season 2. He highlights the top takeaways that any early-stage marketplace entrepreneur can use, and backs them up with outtakes from the interviews.

Besides a recap, you can use this episode as a quick guide to discover the episodes you have yet to listen to or rediscover your favorites.

We hope you enjoyed this season!

If you have any feedback about the podcast, email sjoerd at sjoerd@sharetribe.com.

A community can be a strong foundation for a marketplace. In the early days, it helps with onboarding initial supply and demand and creates trust. Later, it can form a powerful moat that defends the marketplace from competitors.

But building a community takes time and work and, most importantly, engaging in it yourself.

In this episode, Sjoerd interviews Gene Miguel, CEO and co-founder of Shortboxed, a marketplace for buying and selling comic books.

Gene and his co-founder have been lifelong comic book nerds. They both had day jobs in tech, but dealt comic books on the side and spent their days off at comic book conventions. They also started a comic book blog, around which slowly a community started to form.

As dealers, they experienced first-hand how poorly and inefficiently the entire comic book secondary market was run. That’s when they decided to build Shortboxed.

In this season’s final Two-Sided interview, Gene shares:

• How starting a blog helped them build the community
• How building in public with the community helped them onboard the first supply and demand
• What a double-bind marketplace is, and why Shortboxed uses that model
• How they faked many features by running them manually before automating them

A compelling story of a marketplace where passion is combined with a solid business case.

Sometimes, the story of the founder can be just as interesting as the story of the marketplace.

In the case of Trisha Bantigue, this is certainly the case. Trisha was born in the Philippines, raised by her grandparents, immigrated to the US at age 10, and paid her way through college by competing in pageants.

Today, she is the CEO and co-founder of Queenly, a marketplace for formal dresses. Queenly is backed by prestigious investors such as YCombinator and Andreessen Horowitz.

Though Two-sided does not focus on founder stories, Trisha's journey is pivotal in the story of Queenly. The idea behind the platform comes from Trisha's own pageant experience. And marketplaces in their early stages need non-scalable tactics; in other words, perseverance. Trisha had that in plenty.

In the latest episode of Two-sided, Trisha tells Sjoerd how Queenly got to where it is now:

• Launching the app and getting absolutely no traction for months.
• The difficulty of estimating your own worth as a first-time founder.
• The challenge of talking to investors in a way that makes them understand your vision and punctures their preconceptions.
• How to deal with incredible setbacks, and turn them around for the better.

Overall, a truly inspiring story for all of the marketplace founders listening

First-time marketplace founders often struggle to balance speed to market and marketplace quality.

On the one hand, launching an MVP as fast as possible is often the best strategy.

On the other hand, high quality and trustworthiness are essential, especially for peer-to-peer marketplaces.

Despite being first-time founders, Gaurav Singhal and Dirk-Jan ter Horst cracked this trade-off from the get-go. When they launched their peer-to-peer car rental platform in Singapore, their sole focus was to get to the market fast. Yet they had a clear vision for Drive lah’s customer experience from day one.

In the latest episode of Two-Sided, Gaurav shares his lessons on:

• Transitioning from a corporate job to entrepreneurship: both founders were working at the same corporation, where they conceived the idea over lunch.
• Testing potential features with manual work before building them – and spending lots of time with customers in the process.
• Launching fast with Sharetribe Flex without compromising on their customer experience vision.
• Working with regulatory limits: before Drive lah, it was illegal in Singapore for private individuals to rent out their car.
• Putting trust front and center: having raised their seed round one month before Covid, Drive lah was able to turn a potential disaster into a tailwind.
• Expanding Drive lah to Australia as Drive mate.
• And much more.

An enlightening episode, with something for everyone building a marketplace.