10+ Best Articles on Marketplaces
The most useful articles on marketplaces from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Marketplaces Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved on marketplaces by Refind users in 2023 so far.
How to ...?
How to build a billion dollar digital marketplace
Marketplaces are easily underestimated When marketplaces get big, they can get really big. Some of the biggest tech successes ever – eBay, Airbnb, Alibaba, Uber – are marketplaces worth tens of billions of dollars each. And yet marketplaces often start small, in niches and weird corners of the Internet. As we all know, when eBay […]
How to measure CAC in a two-sided marketplace
A framework for thinking about CAC and how it impacts unit economics for your marketplace startup
How to Choose a Content Marketing Platform or Marketplace (And What's the Difference?) [Infographic]
Content marketing marketplaces and platforms both offer benefits, but which tool is best for your content program, and how can you pick the right partner?
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles on marketplaces—all under 10 minutes.
Mostly middlemen: Take rates, vigs, and rakes
How the middleman gets paid
«quency, but you only make»
Blockchain-based Machine Learning Marketplaces
Machine learning models trained on data from blockchain-based marketplaces have the potential to create the world’s most powerful…
WTF is Marketplace Liquidity?
Methodologies for understanding and measuring marketplace liquidity
Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays
The current generation of marketplace startups has been incredibly successful. Airbnb, Lime, Uber, Lyft, Instacart, etc. I’ve been doing a broad survey of the best writing on this topic and wanted to share my list of 20 best links I’ve seen. Marketplaces at Andreessen Horowitz We look at a lot of marketplace startups at Andreessen […]
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles on marketplaces.
Braintrust: Fighting Capitalism with Capitalism
Or, how web3 businesses can use tokenomics to create and capture long-term value
The Next Trillion Dollar Marketplace Will Put SKUs on Services
Why service marketplaces aren’t scaling and how they might get unstuck
28 ways to grow supply in a marketplace
Hi readers, The growth teams at Uber and Airbnb occasionally met over the years to share best practices, brainstorm ideas, and share observations on the startup world. I’ve had folks over to 1455…
The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup's metrics
Entrepreneurs and investors base decisions on user growth forecasts. But common models for user growth rely on lagging indicators. In this clever article, venture capitalist Andrew Chen details a method for understanding and predicting growth via user “acquisition loops” and “engagement loops.” Start-up investors and entrepreneurs will appreciate Chen’s authoritative take on this crucial subject, as well as his emphasis on sustainability and quality.
Markets Are Eating The World
For the last hundred years, individuals have worked for firms, and, by historical standards, large ones. That many of us live in suburbs and drive our cars into the city to go to work at a large of…
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