Head of Strategy & Analytics, Faire · Marketplace Expert
STRATEGY
The Framework
A Growth Model is Your Business Formula
"50% of the value from building a growth model is simply building the model. It forces you to understand how your business works. You get a spreadsheet that's very hard to fake."
Lives in Excel: a formula that represents your entire business
Not a forecasting tool, but an opportunity assessment tool
Forces brutal clarity: you must understand every assumption
Reveals the levers that actually matter for your growth
The pitfallStacking assumptions is dangerous. Marketplaces especially risk "junk in, junk out" when you're trying to model both supply and demand simultaneously. Start with a simple high-level model, then build mini-models per team.
Marketplace Metrics
The 4 North Stars Every Marketplace Needs
GMV & Transactions: The ultimate metric that brings supply and demand together
Unit Economics: Most early marketplaces have negative or poor unit economics (Instacart, Uber). Understand the path to profitability.
Liquidity: Can buyers find what they want? Can sellers find buyers? For Uber: wait time. For commerce: search fill rate. This is THE metric until you have it.
Share of Wallet: What % of a customer's total spend comes through you? This drives LTV, retention, and defensibility.
Why share of wallet matters most
Two ways to grow 10% GMV: get 10% more customers OR get 10% more of existing customers' wallet. Take the second. It signals depth, retention, and a defensible moat.
The liquidity threshold
For Uber, there's a magic moment around 4-5 min wait time where the service clicks. Before that threshold, nothing else matters. Focus ruthlessly on liquidity first.
Supply vs. Demand
The Counter-Intuitive Truth
Most PMs over-rotate on supply, under-focus on demand
Supply feels important early (it is the product initially), but demand is the currency
If you own demand, suppliers will always say yes to your marketplace
Only acquire supply if you understand its impact on customer experience
"Demand is the only thing that matters. If you can aggregate the demand, you will win. Because suppliers will always say yes if you bring them customers at a profitable rate."
The hidden principleEvery supply acquisition decision must answer: does this meaningfully improve the customer experience? If not, it's waste.
Contrarian
Marketplace Myths Debunked
✗You should focus on supply-side product firstINSTEAD →✓ Obsess over the demand-side experience. Supply will follow if demand is strong enough.
✗Expand to many categories / geographies quicklyINSTEAD →✓ Narrow scope ruthlessly. Build liquidity in one category or geography first, then scale.
✗Unit economics must be positive from day oneINSTEAD →✓ Early marketplaces almost always have negative unit economics. The moat comes later as supply and demand densify.
✗Run a marketplace like a SaaS businessINSTEAD →✓ You're a gardener, not a construction worker. Light touch, long feedback loops, ecosystem thinking required.