I have designed a few of these online marketplaces and I can tell you from experience that in this day and age, phone numbers are a deterrent on a signup form. I advise against it and agree more with the cons. However, that does not mean that you cannot get feedback from students. Form the past ...
You need to stock the shelves with products that your customers want to buy, but you don't need to create a Wal-mart size store right away. You are right to focus on one local market first. Figure out how many transactions you need to prove product/market fit and then work backwards. If you ne...
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...
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...
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...
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...