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The NFX Marketplace Glossary
The NFX Marketplace Glossary
2-SIDED MARKETPLACE
The two sides of a marketplace are buyers and sellers. Successful 2-Sided
Marketplaces like Craigslist are very difficult to disrupt. To break them
apart you must have a better value proposition for both parties
simultaneously, or else nobody moves. Customers are there for the
vendors, and vendors are there for the customers. One won’t leave without
the other.
For example, in a food delivery marketplace, you have one side that is
clearly the supply (restaurants), one that is clearly the demand
(customers). But what about the drivers? They help fulfill the supply, but
they have different incentives and monetization than the restaurants.True
n-sided marketplaces, however, tend to be market networks.
3. MARKETPLACE NETWORK
EFFECT TYPES
Not all marketplace network effects function the same way.There are
broadly three different types of marketplace nfx. They differ in how
marginal supply-side users on the network impact the value of the
marketplace to demand-side users.For a typical marketplace like eBay,
there is a direct correlation between the amount of supply/ inventory on a
marketplace and the value of that marketplace for demand-side users.
Each new eBay seller adds value to all the eBay shoppers.
By contrast, delayed marketplaces like OpenTable take a long time to get
to a critical mass of supply before the marketplace is very useful for
demand side users at all. If only 1 out of every 100 restaurants in your city
is on OpenTable as a restaurant-goer, the value of OpenTable does not
increase by 100% if that increases to 2 out of 100 restaurants. It’s still
negligible and makes no real difference to you. But when OpenTable
approaches a critical mass of restaurants in your area, it becomes
exponentially more valuable.
4. DISINTERMEDIATION
For example, people who use Snap stories may use Instagram stories to
reach a different audience. Usage of one service may serve to reinforce and
increase usage of the other service as people become more habituated to
using both and see greater value from the broad category of “stories”
shared on both.
There are at least 19 specific tactics we know of that can help solve this
problem. Several of them involve creating a single-player mode product
that provides value to one side of the marketplace even without a network
in place. Others involve attracting one side of the marketplace with
compensation, such as cash or leads.
7. SUPPLY-SIDE MARKETPLACE
9. FINTECH-ENABLED
MARKETPLACE
AI and data advances are enabling all three of these buckets, because
models for underwriting debt, insurance, and loans are becoming
increasingly powerful thanks to AI and increased data exhaust. A number
of B2B companies have also been popping up which leverage the growing
amount of data available to be sourced or scraped from public sources and
package it together to underwrite risk for their customers.
Leveraging new data sources and AI reduces the cost of underwriting via
automation and improves loss ratios relative to more traditional
underwriting or credit models. As a consequence, insurance and
alternative financing options are becoming cheaper and more broadly
applicable, expanding accessibility and giving rise to new use cases for
debt and insurance that marketplaces can tailor to their specific needs.
11. LOCK-IN
One of the reasons why 2-Sided Marketplaces are so defensible is because
of the “lock-in” created by cross-side network effects. If you’re a supplier,
you can get locked into a marketplace because there is too much demand
to leave, and vice versa. Neither side can move, once the marketplace nfx
get going, without sacrificing access to the other side.
12. CRITICAL MASS
The critical mass of a network refers to the point at which the value
produced by the network exceeds the value of the product itself and of
competing products. This can happen at different times depending on the
type of a network.
Contrast that with a platform network like Windows or iOS. The value of
the Windows operating system, even without any programs or
applications, is quite high on its own. Only after the network of users and
developers has grown quite large does the value of all the third-party
programs, plus the value of the interoperability with other users, exceed
the value (for users) of the Microsoft programs by themselves.
Most products with network effects must ultimately reach critical mass in
order to fully take advantage of the defensibility provided by their
network effects. Before the size of the network reaches critical mass, the
product remains quite vulnerable and may not have much value to users.
For such products, the challenge is often to build enough initial value to
incentivize early adopters to start using the product even before the
network effects value has kicked in.
13. SAME-SIDE NETWORK EFFECTS
Same-side network effects are direct network effects that occur on the
same side of a multi-sided (2-sided or N-sided network). Same-side
network effects refer to the change in value that occurs for users on the
same side with the addition of users on that side.
Same-side network effects can also be positive, however. This is the case
for Windows users, who benefit from the addition of new Windows users
because of file compatibility. Two Windows users can easily share files
amongst themselves, and the number of people you can share files with
grows with the number of people using the same platform.
So to take the example of Uber yet again, there are large positive cross-side
network effects because each additional driver adds direct value to all the
users on the passenger side (up to a point) and vice versa.
15. RAKE / TAKE RATE
Marketplaces usually monetize by taking a percentage of each transaction
that occurs on the marketplace, known as the take rate or rake. This can
eat into the margins of suppliers on a consumer marketplace or on both
sides of a B2B marketplace, which can be an incentive to disintermediate
the marketplace. Pricing strategy is therefore a key part of the formula in
getting marketplace nfx going.