How to build a two sided marketplace without code
In this article on "How to build a two sided marketplace without code", I tried consolidating the learnings our no-code development agency has gained from building hundreds of no-code projects for clients, with a plurality of those being two-sided marketplaces. Any and all feedback is welcome!
I basically argue that with marketplaces in particular, we're at a very unique inflection point where the scaling of the marketplace ecosystem itself - getting the flywheel of buyers bringing on sellers and vice versa - is now significantly more difficult than actually building out the technical components. Yet we almost exclusively have clients coming to us asking to build out the marketplace itself when many would be better served trying to do it themselves and using their domain specific knowledge to get it off the ground.
I end up covering how to build a marketplace at three levels of difficulty, and how to approach your market through the Blue Ocean Strategy framework.
This is probably determined mostly by the founders experience and approach. But from what you've seen, what rough percentage of marketplace projects would you say grow into successful sustainable businesses?
Can you list any example marketplaces that have impressive growth?
Sure! Marketplaces with some of the fastest growth rates we've seen are Faire and Cameo. Kind of question the resilience of marketplaces in fledgling categories though like Cameo. Despite Faire and Cameo having nearly identical YoY growth rates, I really don't see the Celebrity Engagement category as being able to support multiple marketplaces, and we'll see what happens to Cameo longer term.
One category that is propping up a lot of fast growing marketplaces though is fashion, and more specifically streetwear. I think that's partly because of the buy/resell culture of streetwear that it can adapt so easily to online marketplaces, but StockX, GOAT and Stadium Goods are all some of the fastest growing marketplaces out right now. And I'm bullish on them because they're in a category that's seeing lots of growth as a whole.
You might as well have listed Amazon and Ebay. haha. I meant maybe some newer niche smaller ones or marketplaces less obvious than fashion or sneakers. Any you've done for your clients? Or something that didn't start with tens of millions of startup capital.