** This is a one-off cross-promotional episode of our new podcast: Sharetribe Founder Stories.** This new podcast features interviews with founders building successful online marketplaces with Sharetribe. Discover how founders identified opportunities, overcame challenges, and scaled their platforms—from their first transaction to millions in GMV. Each episode dives into both the strategies that worked and the mistakes that taught valuable lessons. In this first episode, you can hear the story o...
May 14, 2025•44 min
In this solo episode, Sjoerd wraps up Season 3 of Two-Sided, summarizing key lessons from eight insightful conversations with leading marketplace investors. He highlights essential themes like leveraging network effects for defensibility, the power of starting small before scaling, succeeding in B2B marketplaces, and how AI is reshaping the future. A concise yet rich recap—don’t miss it!
Apr 03, 2025•29 min•Season 3Ep. 9
In this episode, we dive into the world of marketplaces with Pete Flint, co-founder of NFX, one of the leading venture firms specializing in network effects. Pete brings decades of marketplace experience, from the founding team at Lastminute.com to the creation of Trulia and its merger with Zillow. At NFX, Pete and his team have a unique perspective on how network effects drive defensibility in marketplace businesses. Here are three highlights from the conversation: The Key to Defensibility: Pet...
Mar 12, 2025•27 min•Season 3Ep. 8
In this episode, we dive into the world of B2B marketplace investments with Laurens Groenendrijk and Bas Rieter from DFF Ventures. With years of experience as founders and investors, Bas and Laurens (as co-founder of JustEat and Treatwell) share valuable insights into building and scaling marketplaces that disrupt traditional industries. Tune in for: The rise of re-commerce and the role of technology in creating trust and transparency within B2B marketplaces. Why focusing on niche markets can be...
Mar 05, 2025•38 min•Season 3Ep. 7
In this episode, we’re joined by Colin Gardiner, a seasoned operator and investor in the marketplace space. From his experience scaling Outdoorsy to leading early-stage investments, Colin dives into the critical elements that make marketplaces succeed and thrive. Highlights: Why unique supply is key: Colin explains how aggregating truly unique supply drives the success of a marketplace. The importance of a strong distribution strategy: A strong go-to-market plan can be the deciding factor in whe...
Feb 26, 2025•34 min•Season 3Ep. 6
In this episode of Two-Sided, we explore how early-stage marketplace investors like Jeroen Arts at Speedinvest evaluate and support marketplace founders. Jeroen brings years of experience in identifying scalable marketplace models, high-potential founders and shares his approach to spotting opportunities and avoiding common mistakes for early stage founders. Highlights include: The power of speed in decision-making : Jeroen discusses the critical importance of “clock speed” in founders—how quick...
Feb 19, 2025•35 min•Season 3Ep. 5
In this episode, we are joined by Mira Mihaylova from Piton Capital. Since its inception in 2010, Piton Capital has focused solely on network effects businesses, having invested in over 100 businesses, all with network effects, and the vast majority of them are marketplaces. Some of the things we’ll talk about: Frontal vs lateral attack strategy: Mira highlights the challenges of launching a marketplace that directly competes with an established player (frontal attack), advising founders to inst...
Feb 12, 2025•32 min•Season 3Ep. 4
In this episode, Andrew Blachman, co-founder of Marketplace Capital, shares his wealth of experience in building and investing in online marketplaces. As an operator turned investor, he reveals valuable insights for aspiring marketplace founders. Highlights: The importance of creating new market opportunities: Andrew explains how successful marketplaces unlock new supply or demand that didn’t exist before, like Airbnb did for short-term rentals. Why building traction before raising capital is ke...
Feb 05, 2025•37 min•Season 3Ep. 3
In this episode, we'll talk to Sameer Singh, an angel investor known for his excellent blog on network effects, Breadcrumb.vc, former Atomico Angel, and current venture partner at SpeedInvest. We’ll discuss how Sameer evaluates marketplace businesses: Evaluating Network Effects : Sameer walks through his four-step evaluation process for marketplace investments, focusing on unique multiplayer interactions and defensibility. Challenges in Early-Stage Marketplaces : He discusses common mistakes mad...
Jan 29, 2025•32 min•Season 3Ep. 2
After a brief hiatus, Two-sided—the marketplace podcast is back! I’m super excited to kick off season three of the podcast with a chat with Jose Marin of FJ Labs. FJ Labs is considered the world’s most prolific angel investor: they have over 1,100 startups in their portfolio , including heavy hitters like Airbnb, Alibaba, and AngelList (and that’s just the ones beginning with the letter A). Jose has also been a marketplace founder himself. His marketplace DeRemate (eBay model for Latin America) ...
Jan 22, 2025•39 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Season three of Two-Sided is here, and we’re switching focus. After exploring the experiences of entrepreneurs and founders in previous seasons, we now dive into the minds of the investors shaping the future of online marketplaces. I chat with top marketplace VCs like Jose Marin from FJ Labs, Pete Flint from NFX, and Andrew Blachman from Marketplace Capital to uncover what they look for in startups, the challenges they see, and the trends to watch. Whether you're building or funding, this season...
Jan 16, 2025•4 min
In this special, one-off mini-episode of Two-sided, Sjoerd asks for your help and reflects back on the past ten years of building marketplace software at Sharetribe. On January 30th, 2024, Sharetribe launched its best marketplace builder today on Product Hunt. We were featured as #2 Product of the Day! Thank you so much for your support! With the new Sharetribe, you can launch a marketplace in a day, without coding. You can also extend it infinitely with code. And scale to any size. Create a Sha...
Jan 30, 2024•6 min
In this final episode, Sjoerd looks back at season 2. He highlights the top takeaways that any early-stage marketplace entrepreneur can use, and backs them up with outtakes from the interviews. Besides a recap, you can use this episode as a quick guide to discover the episodes you have yet to listen to or rediscover your favorites. We hope you enjoyed this season! If you have any feedback about the podcast, email sjoerd at sjoerd@sharetribe.com....
Dec 06, 2022•28 min•Season 2Ep. 12
A community can be a strong foundation for a marketplace. In the early days, it helps with onboarding initial supply and demand and creates trust. Later, it can form a powerful moat that defends the marketplace from competitors. But building a community takes time and work and, most importantly, engaging in it yourself. In this episode, Sjoerd interviews Gene Miguel, CEO and co-founder of Shortboxed, a marketplace for buying and selling comic books. Gene and his co-founder have been lifelong com...
Nov 22, 2022•50 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Sometimes, the story of the founder can be just as interesting as the story of the marketplace. In the case of Trisha Bantigue, this is certainly the case. Trisha was born in the Philippines, raised by her grandparents, immigrated to the US at age 10, and paid her way through college by competing in pageants. Today, she is the CEO and co-founder of Queenly, a marketplace for formal dresses. Queenly is backed by prestigious investors such as YCombinator and Andreessen Horowitz. Though Two-sided d...
Nov 08, 2022•45 min•Season 2Ep. 10
First-time marketplace founders often struggle to balance speed to market and marketplace quality. On the one hand, launching an MVP as fast as possible is often the best strategy. On the other hand, high quality and trustworthiness are essential, especially for peer-to-peer marketplaces. Despite being first-time founders, Gaurav Singhal and Dirk-Jan ter Horst cracked this trade-off from the get-go. When they launched their peer-to-peer car rental platform in Singapore, their sole focus was to g...
Oct 25, 2022•45 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Marketplaces have conquered some industries earlier and faster than others. Besides home-sharing and ride-haling, one such industry is fashion. The European second-hand clothing giant Vinted was founded in 2008. The US-based Poshmark started in 2011 and is now a listed company. One might think there are no opportunities left for new marketplaces in these pioneer industries. One would be wrong. In this episode of Two-Sided, Sjoerd talks to David Oates, CEO and co-founder of Curtsy. Curtsy is thri...
Oct 11, 2022•47 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Jason Bergman thinks most marketplace founders underestimate the power of sales. Jason is a big sports fan and has always loved working in sales. Before founding MarketPryce, he ran his own sports agency where he tried acquiring customers by sending Instagram messages to almost three thousand professional athletes. The success rate of the Instagram tactic was pretty terrible. But the experience paid off big time when Jason co-founded MarketPryce, a platform for athletes to find marketing deals. ...
Sep 27, 2022•47 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Andrew Gazdecki loves building businesses. He was the weird kid in high school with an eBay store. He built and sold a job board in college. He used the proceeds to start another company, still in college, which he sold before he turned 30. Andrew’s latest venture is MicroAcquire, a marketplace for buying and selling online businesses. The platform boasts a community of more than 150,000 entrepreneurs and raised $6.3m in funding last year. In the latest episode of Two-Sided, Andrew talks to Sjoe...
Sep 13, 2022•41 min•Season 2Ep. 6
I'm talking to Dirk Fehse, founder and CEO of PaulCamper, Europe's leading marketplace for RV rentals. Many of us have probably daydreamed about spending a few weeks on the road in an RV. Just get in the van, and park it wherever you want, and that's your home for the night. Dirk loved this too, and so much that he founded a company around it. It's a wonderful story, driven by passion, and started out really lean, as you will hear. We talk about: How PaulCamper got started How Dirk built it piec...
Jul 26, 2022•34 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In business school, Emmanuel Nataf and his friends were bored. They were more interested in startups and tech than studying, and so they decided to start a company: a marketplace around services for self-publishing books. Had any of them ever published a book? No! Did that prevent them from becoming successful? Also, no! We talk a bit about that journey, how they found content & SEO to be their best channel, and how they doubled down on that. We also discuss how Reedsy built a community to s...
Jul 12, 2022•35 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Knowing is half the battle, said the wise man G.I. Joe at the end of each episode. This rings doubly true for James Younger of TempStars, a marketplace for temporary dental hygienists and assistants. Not only is James working on a problem that he knows really well, but he also made a point of getting to know as much as he could about design, web development, and digital marketing after the first version of Tempstars turned out disastrous. We speak about that, and about how Tempstars got started,...
Jun 28, 2022•37 min•Season 2Ep. 3
For this episode, I spoke to James McAulay, CEO & co-founder of Encore, a marketplace for booking musicians. We speak about how James combined his love for music and computer science into Encore. How they got started initially as a “LinkedIn for musicians”, then moved to a “managed reverse marketplace” model to ultimately transform into the online marketplace it is today. Many great stories and lessons to be learned from here.
Jun 14, 2022•39 min•Season 2Ep. 2
We kick off the season with a deep-dive by Casey Winters, one of the most knowledgable and experienced two-sided platform people out there. Casey started at Apartments.com, helped Grubhub to IPO-ready, grew Pinterest to an enormous scale, and is now Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite. In between, he has advised a gazillion marketplace startups: Hipcamp, Faire, Airbnb, Uber, GoFundMe... It’s almost more difficult to name one that he hasn’t advised.
May 31, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 1
It is coming. Finally. Two-Sided Season 2. I know many of you have been waiting a long time. A big thanks to everyone who has reached out me since the first season, and let me or Sharetribe know how much they liked it. It has been a big motivator for us to continue. It’s later than expected, but good things come to those who wait. And boy, are good things coming! I have already recorded some really terrific interviews and a few more in the pipeline, and I found myself learning a whole lot again,...
May 24, 2022•2 min
In this episode we look back at season 1. I distill five interesting takeaways that any early-stage marketplace entrepreneur can use, and I have picked out the most relevant outtakes from this season’s interviews.
Aug 12, 2020•37 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Bryan Clayton, co-founder and CEO of Greenpal, tells the story behind Greenpal, the marketplace for lawn care, and how he transformed himself from a blue-collar entrepreneur into a tech entrepreneur.
Aug 05, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Charles Adler, co-founder of Kickstarter, shares how Kickstarter began and how they grew organically while maintaining the quality and the vibe.
Jul 29, 2020•53 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Jacob Wedderburn-Day tells Sjoerd about building Stasher fresh out of university and dealing with the pandemic in a travel industry marketplace.
Jul 22, 2020•38 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Ryan Gills shares how Communo got started, why he thinks Fiverr & UpWork are in a race to the bottom, why they built a community that is about giving before receiving and how Communo is building for the future generations.
Jul 15, 2020•38 min•Season 1Ep. 8
