by Alan W
“But everybody is doing marketplaces now.”
Uber, AirBnB, Linkedin, Youtube. The list goes on. Get an idea for a marketplace and tell yourself “But others have done that already.”
Often, there are unseen problems at the core of major success stories. Great founders aren’t blinded by incumbents – they are gifted with insight to spot inefficiencies, evolutions, and build for the next generation. The demand side might not be getting what they really want. The supply side might be wilting as prices are constantly driven down. Or culture shifts may have enabled entirely new behaviours.
I’ve seen that a new marketplace can break out by uniquely innovating on product, demand, and supply. A new marketplace can break out by uniquely innovating on product, demand, and supply.
I want to give an example of the SUPPLY side.
Unlocking latent supply is to change how you define supply. Let’s take the building industry as an example. Typically in a marketplace connecting demand and supply, the supply side provides project managers, trucking companies to transport materials, heavy machinery operators, architects, engineers, plumbers, electricians and so on, individually. What if we match all these skills into teams, thus bringing all these skills together as one team and then connect them with genuinely interesting, innovative building opportunities. This opens up new doors for the demand side and not only that, it CREATES new demand.
The first thing we did here was spot an unseen problem on the supply side. Let’s not trap the consumers who want to work differently in the ecosystem we create, our job is to serve them.
Work with Alan W
“Solving niche challenges founders face”.
Illustrator: Lisa Williams (Instagram: @artist_llw)