Hello All! 👋🏾 Does anyone have any tips on solving the chicken and egg problem for a buy & sell marketplace? A little background information about me. My name is Brian, I am the founder of SellyNow, a new video live stream marketplace to buy or sell items of all kinds. Currently, I am working on growing our seller user base which hopefully will attract buyers. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks 🙏🏾

Hi Brian. I don’t have experience with building one my self, but I have worked on a few projects as a consultant for businesses development and growth in this area. My conclusion is the following: • Securing some supply is always step no.1 • Bringing in demand is important as a follow up wave. • Timing is crucial for everthing, if there’s a big bug that halts everyhitng for a few weeks, you’ve lost momentum and need to invest a lot of resources to build it up again. • You need to find a USP for both sides otherwise you will struggle • Overall you need a lot of investment to attract both sides, but especially for the first waves of customers (offers, deals, discounts, etc) to show the sellers you’re worth sticking around for. Also while I was doing research I found this outstanding 6 part piece by Lenny: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-kickstart-and-scale-a-marketplace it’s a must read if you’re in this space

Awesome! Thank you so much Tina!

Having led strategy at a 2-sided marketplace, the answer is usually to spend approx 50% of your budget on EACH of the two sides. For buyers you should opt for a scale approach i.e. low CPC / CPA / CAC to maximimize # of users. For sellers you should opt for a high-quality, high-touch approach i.e. high CAC. Create "ambassadors" and focus on going above and beyond in terms of customer experience (eg: calling them to congratulate one every sale while you're a new business, collecting feedback constantly, etc.). This will create strong loyalty and enable great organic growth. Then introduce a referral program to really switch on the afterburners and take your proposition to the next level

Lak, thanks so much for this great information!

be honest with the supply side at first. Don't oversell it. Explain to them that you'll be spending money on getting the demand side in. But you need the supply first. Tell them that as early adopter they'll get the first X years commission free and maybe better rankings on the platforms. Sell them on how you're going to blow this thing up and you will get them in. Also explain your plan for the demand side (I'll be spending a few ks a month on adwords, that much on Facebook ads and that much on LinkedIn ads and some of that free marketing will be directed to you.

Omar, thanks so much for this great information!