Here’s a focused list of best practices to manage and retain independent service providers (like Lyft drivers) in a two-sided marketplace: 1. Treat Providers as Customers They’re just as critical as users. Offer onboarding support like video tutorials and 1:1 chat. Simplify the application and a...
Your support software should cater to your needs, depending on how your business operates. Fiver uses Vanilla forum and Zendesk. Thumbtack uses Zendesk. Not sure about AirBNB, their help center seems to be custom. Depending on how well funded your are, I would recommend starting with a free pla...
Hi The concept is more or less as I explained in my answer here (on Clarity): https://clarity.fm/questions/6423/how-do-you-do-market-research After you schedule a call, you can send me the specific details of the venture (who are the service providers, what type of students, your business model, ...
I am currently the CTO of a vibrant online marketplace. As prior responders said, we started with demand. Once we had people who wanted to pay for our services, it was easier to find suppliers to fulfill the demand. In addition, we started with a narrow focus, and then expanded. We are a lo...
Several ways come to mind. Formulate your idea into one (or better all) of the following + you'll know by interest level if you have a winner. 1) My favorite. Start a Meetup Group (set the zipcode of group) to match the zipcode of a US city where most people originate travel to your target dest...
Hmm .. Interesting that you say your sector isn't being addressed. Wonder why ... But if so, then that's an opportunity. I've spent the past 4 years specializing in probably THE hardest market for making accurate appraisals: the domain name industry. For me as an engineer, that has meant crunc...
Focus on the more difficult side of the marketplace. For instance, if you think it'll be easier to get suppliers, then focus first on getting buyers - always be working on your toughest problem (aka your biggest risk). You'll find some great blogging on Marketplace and Platform topics here ht...
Here are my thoughts: "Offering stock options to the first 5". We tested this and it turns out this isn't viable. Not only will you administrative overhead managing your cap table, you're going to turn off investors that may not like the structure. My advice is: keep it simple. 1. Define your...
The best way to solve chicken and egg problems for marketplaces is to prove market need on each side independently first with a low-cost MVP-type test. Once you've proven the market on both sides with metrics it is much easier to leg in supply and demand with a strategic or enough funding to mat...
Maybe hire a freelance market researcher to find out? ;) Generally, something like this is going to appeal to fortune 500 companies. Smaller companies and entrepreneurs are going to be doing market research themselves. From the question it is difficult to tell if you have come into possession ...