Two-Sided - The Marketplace Podcast

Surprise! It’s a Two-Sided bonus episode! Sjoerd sat down with Constantine Anastasakis, CEO of Dribbble, to discuss their transition from an online design community to a lead-generation marketplace.  The shift sparked a loud social-media backlash, but, as you’ll hear in the episode, the comments mostly missed what was actually happening on the platform. We discuss: The pivot timeline and rationale...

** This is a one-off cross-promotional episode of our new podcast: Sharetribe Founder Stories.** This new podcast features interviews with founders building successful online marketplaces with Sharetribe. Discover how founders identified opportunities, overcame challenges, and scaled their platforms—from their first transaction to millions in GMV. Each episode dives into both the strategies that w...

In this solo episode, Sjoerd wraps up Season 3 of Two-Sided, summarizing key lessons from eight insightful conversations with leading marketplace investors. He highlights essential themes like leveraging network effects for defensibility, the power of starting small before scaling, succeeding in B2B marketplaces, and how AI is reshaping the future. A concise yet rich recap—don’t miss it!

In this episode, we dive into the world of marketplaces with Pete Flint, co-founder of NFX, one of the leading venture firms specializing in network effects. Pete brings decades of marketplace experience, from the founding team at Lastminute.com to the creation of Trulia and its merger with Zillow. At NFX, Pete and his team have a unique perspective on how network effects drive defensibility in ma...

In this episode, we dive into the world of B2B marketplace investments with Laurens Groenendrijk and Bas Rieter from DFF Ventures. With years of experience as founders and investors, Bas and Laurens (as co-founder of JustEat and Treatwell) share valuable insights into building and scaling marketplaces that disrupt traditional industries. Tune in for: The rise of re-commerce and the role of technol...

In this episode, we’re joined by Colin Gardiner, a seasoned operator and investor in the marketplace space. From his experience scaling Outdoorsy to leading early-stage investments, Colin dives into the critical elements that make marketplaces succeed and thrive. Highlights: Why unique supply is key: Colin explains how aggregating truly unique supply drives the success of a marketplace. The import...

In this episode of Two-Sided, we explore how early-stage marketplace investors like Jeroen Arts at Speedinvest evaluate and support marketplace founders. Jeroen brings years of experience in identifying scalable marketplace models, high-potential founders and shares his approach to spotting opportunities and avoiding common mistakes for early stage founders. Highlights include: The power of speed...

In this episode, we are joined by Mira Mihaylova from Piton Capital. Since its inception in 2010, Piton Capital has focused solely on network effects businesses, having invested in over 100 businesses, all with network effects, and the vast majority of them are marketplaces. Some of the things we’ll talk about: Frontal vs lateral attack strategy: Mira highlights the challenges of launching a marke...

In this episode, Andrew Blachman, co-founder of Marketplace Capital, shares his wealth of experience in building and investing in online marketplaces. As an operator turned investor, he reveals valuable insights for aspiring marketplace founders. Highlights: The importance of creating new market opportunities: Andrew explains how successful marketplaces unlock new supply or demand that didn’t exis...

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 inter...

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...

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 startup...

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 d...

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 t...

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 Shortbox...

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. Queen...

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-...

Marketplaces have conquered some industries earlier and faster than others. Besides home-sharing and ride-haling, one such industry is fashion. The European second-hand clothing giant Vinted was founded in 2008. The US-based Poshmark started in 2011 and is now a listed company. One might think there are no opportunities left for new marketplaces in these pioneer industries. One would be wrong. In...

Jason Bergman thinks most marketplace founders underestimate the power of sales. Jason is a big sports fan and has always loved working in sales. Before founding MarketPryce, he ran his own sports agency where he tried acquiring customers by sending Instagram messages to almost three thousand professional athletes. The success rate of the Instagram tactic was pretty terrible. But the experience pa...

Andrew Gazdecki loves building businesses. He was the weird kid in high school with an eBay store. He built and sold a job board in college. He used the proceeds to start another company, still in college, which he sold before he turned 30.  Andrew’s latest venture is MicroAcquire, a marketplace for buying and selling online businesses. The platform boasts a community of more than 150,000 entrepre...

I'm talking to Dirk Fehse, founder and CEO of PaulCamper, Europe's leading marketplace for RV rentals. Many of us have probably daydreamed about spending a few weeks on the road in an RV. Just get in the van, and park it wherever you want, and that's your home for the night. Dirk loved this too, and so much that he founded a company around it. It's a wonderful story, driven by passion, and started...

In business school, Emmanuel Nataf and his friends were bored. They were more interested in startups and tech than studying, and so they decided to start a company: a marketplace around services for self-publishing books. Had any of them ever published a book? No! Did that prevent them from becoming successful? Also, no! We talk a bit about that journey, how they found content & SEO to be thei...

Knowing is half the battle, said the wise man G.I. Joe at the end of each episode.  This rings doubly true for James Younger of TempStars, a marketplace for temporary dental hygienists and assistants. Not only is James working on a problem that he knows really well, but he also made a point of getting to know as much as he could about design, web development, and digital marketing after the first...

For this episode, I spoke to James McAulay, CEO & co-founder of Encore, a marketplace for booking musicians. We speak about how James combined his love for music and computer science into Encore. How they got started initially as a “LinkedIn for musicians”, then moved to a “managed reverse marketplace” model to ultimately transform into the online marketplace it is today. Many great stories an...

We kick off the season with a deep-dive by Casey Winters, one of the most knowledgable and experienced two-sided platform people out there. Casey started at Apartments.com, helped Grubhub to IPO-ready, grew Pinterest to an enormous scale, and is now Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite. In between, he has advised a gazillion marketplace startups: Hipcamp, Faire, Airbnb, Uber, GoFundMe... It’s almos...