I wrote about this many years ago:
https://gomox.medium.com/i-have-a-marketplace-business-idea-...
At the time I was actually doing this exact business idea and one of our founders worked at an airline.
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#102I wrote about this many years ago: https://gomox.medium.com/i-have-a-marketplace-business-idea-... At the time I was actually doing this exact business idea and one of our founders worked at an airline.
I don't know that this blog contributes to the solution, with a TL:DR:
"[...] Identifying which side of the marketplace is more scarce and focusing on supplying that."
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#103> Travelers going between cities/countries carry items for people who need to send stuff.
Carrying othet people's parcels across national boundaries is a really, really bad idea for the person involved. Drugs, money, weapons, explosives, endangered species, etc.
If you plan to run a business that facilitates this then you are exposing yourself to potentially very severe legal liabilities.
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#104I wrote about this many years ago: https://gomox.medium.com/i-have-a-marketplace-business-idea-... At the time I was actually doing this exact business idea and one of our founders worked at an airline.
I don't know that this blog contributes to the solution, with a TL:DR: "[...] Identifying which side of the marketplace is more scarce and focusing on supplying that."
You mean, other than describing 5 possible approaches to the "bootstrapping a marketplace" problem, including a specific solution that worked in the real world to get to 7 figures GMV for the exact marketplace the OP is describing?
:D
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#105You need to cheat to kickstart one side 1) Incentivize people on one side to join without the other side. For example Uber paid early drivers money just for signing up even though they had no riders. 2) You provide one side of the marketplace to kickstart the other side. This would be like Uber hiring drivers in the beginning. This is why starting a two sided marketplace often requires significant capital. They're ve…
This. Stated another way, you need to start by either: fulfilling existing demand yourself....or being the demand yourself.
Interview with Lugg (YC S15) with some details on how they did it: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/interview-with-lugg-founder...
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#106I think this is quite similar to Uber's mode. Their strategy is to fake one side first, their employees fake as the passenger side and attracts the driver. When the driver emerges, the passengers begin to emerge, and then the flywheel begins. So maybe you could fake the demand side, attracting supply side and then begin the flywheel.
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#107Random remarks from the internet.
- In most markets with money, shipping is a solved problem.
- Businesses can only survive in markets with money.
- The chicken and egg problem is one form of the general problem of markets: Trust.
- Experience shipping is the only way to understand shipping.
- This is an idea. If it is not impelling you to actually and physically ship, it is a bad idea.
- For generalized shipping you are under-capitalized and no amount of VC funding will build a general shipping company.
- The model has no way to ensure integrity.
Good luck.
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#108[dead]
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#109There was a startup years ago that tried this. They shut down because people were afraid to carry a stranger's package.
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#110A lot of fantastic answers here: I second the "YOU need to be one side of the marketplace first" but two questions that I haven't seen appear yet are:
- What draws YOU to build a P2P crowdshipping marketplace? Is it just a hypothesis you have or did you suffer an issue that you can't find any existing company offer?
- Is there absolutely no existing company offering the product you need - why don't you call their sales team and ask them what it would take to build it for you?
I've seen founders find a profitable business that they hated running themselves (horrible founder-market fit) and I've seen founders learn why existing businesses weren't solving that problem (horrible unit economics).
Instead if treating yourself as an engineer excited to build a software stack and show off their skills, consider treating yourself as an investor figuring out the TOP 3 things that could get in your way of getting a positive ROI on your investment.