Had an interesting conversation with someone where they were looking for a potential hire who had experience building up a marketplace as a service or platform as a service. Does anyone have any experience specifically in that realm they would be willing to share? I’d be curious to know how that is different set of skills as a PM as opposed to building other sorts of direct B2B or B2C products.
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I was building the Marketplace. You need to be aware and fix the problem of those who provide and those who consumes services the same time and in right order - depend on what are you constrained by. Later when your Marketplace grows you’ll start solving problems even of the 3rd parties (e. g. advertisers). You need someone who can be switching between two completely different worlds.
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@Marco, Thanks for that insight! Wondering how to start building skills towards that if you have any tips? I’ve worked primarily on B2B or B2C products so far.
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Read some books and material first to get better idea what everything is behind and when to do what and just apply for the job since you already have an experience with B2B and B2C. What type of marketplace are we talking about? Check the book Business of Platforms and the page ShareTribe. They have blog and the book too. Then check a16z for all Marketplace related.
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Agree with @MarcoSilva on the book business of platforms. The biggest difference for me is the concept of pipes. Most products are pipes. Check out Chaudhry and his pipes to platforms stuff. Also look at Andrew Chen and Ben Thompson and his stratechery site. That’s a good start!
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Hey @Juan - we’ve built a curated syllabus for learning the specific strategies tied to marketplaces; it covers learning objectives across:
- Intro to Marketplaces
- Types of Marketplaces
- Tackling the Chicken & Egg Problem
- Marketplace Growth
- Team Structures for Marketplaces
- Marketplace Case Studies
With best practices from Thumbtack, NFX, Uber, Pared, OpenTable, and of course, Airbnb.
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Thanks @Michael and @Karan! Will be diving deeper into both 
@Marco, The platform they are talking about is a way to help buyers and suppliers connect and communicate to allow for better discovery between the two as well as offerings that each has.
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@JuanAllo, You’ve just described every platform!
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@Karan, Yep I know but as what they told me is confidential that’s all I could share right now. Wish I could give more details believe me.
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No problem, but i would probably argue what they are doing is like any platform but just a different instance of it. All depends on what job (s) they are trying to get done with the platform
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I do have a feeling that they are still figuring it in terms of the jobs they want to get done. I’m going to track them to see how they do
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