Two-sided marketplaces: why you can't grow one side alone
A marketplace has two different groups of users who each only show up because the other group is already there. That chicken-and-egg problem shapes almost every marketplace decision.
A two-sided marketplace (buyers and sellers, riders and drivers, renters and hosts) has two separate groups of users who each only want to join because the other group is already there in decent numbers. That's a genuine chicken-and-egg problem, and it shapes nearly every decision a marketplace business makes.
🎯 Explain Like I'm Hired Buyers won't show up to an empty store. Sellers won't set up shop with no customers around. This is called the "cold start problem," and almost every marketplace-strategy interview question is secretly asking how you'd solve it. Example: ride-hailing apps famously seeded the supply side first, paying drivers to be available even when there weren't many riders yet, so that once riders did show up, wait times were short enough to keep them coming back.
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