Tristan Pollock reveals his 12 favorite marketplace resources
After starting Storefront in 2012 in Minnesota and then moving west, I’ve spent the majority of my time in San Francisco building a marketplace, talking to marketplace founders, and reading about the trials and tribulations of marketplace startups.
Here’s a quick hit list of some of my favorite online and offline resources:
- The Notorious Craigslist Graphic. This graphic shows the flood of new marketplace businesses from the many Craigslist verticals. Jeremy Levineof Bessemer Venture Partners put out a cleaner version.
- 14 Marketplace Mistakes Killing Your Startup. A post I compiled on the 500 Startups blog covering stories from the founders and early employees of Lyft, Etsy, Airbnb, and 11 other marketplaces.
- Version One Venture’s Marketplace Guide. Boris Wertz and Angela Nguyen have been long-time proponents of marketplaces and put out some of the best marketplace content. Check out their blog, too.
- Crowd Companies blog by Jeremiah Owyang. Looks at the sharing economy side of marketplaces. Favorite post: ‘Collaborative Economy Honeycomb.’
- simon rothman’s blog. The creator of eBay Motors is a partner at Greylock and puts out fantastic content, as well as exclusive Grey Marketmarketplace founder-only events.
- James Currier’s NFX blog. In particular, the post ‘An Epiphany about Network Effects’ that looks at how marketplaces hit hypergrowth.
- Marketplaces group on Facebook. I started this private community for marketplace founders and leaders out of a Marketplace Dinners series. Currently there are 700 members posting marketplace stories, questions, and content.
- Marketplace Dinners. I’ve hosted 10 marketplace dinners and events over the last couple years to bring together marketplace founders.
- Jeff Jordan’s A16Z blog. In particular, the past CEO of OpenTable’s post about online marketplaces.
- Growth Hackers case study on Airbnb. This story tells the reveled story of Airbnb’s early start and growth.
- Bill Gurley’s AboveTheCrowd blog. A General Partner at Benchmark, Gurley has been an early investor in some of the best performing marketplaces, including eBay, Uber, Zillow, OpenTable, and many more.
- Autopsy.io. To end on an appropriate high note, this is a catalog of failed startups and the learnings from them, marketplaces included.
What’s your favorite marketplace resource? Comment it below.
This post was originally published by Tristan Pollock on Medium.