Case studies to overcome the chicken-egg problem in the marketplace

2 min readJul 22, 2019

When you have an idea to start your own marketplace, you go through by process like designing a business model, creating a website, and bringing the seller or consumers in a marketplace.

The big challenge in any rental marketplace business is building the consumers and seller. It would be confusing whether to please the seller or to chase the customers expressing your brand values.

Creating a website is difficult too. But today, few tech companies provide customizable rental software like RentALL, which is quick to set up or SaaS models such as Sharetribe.

Let’s view examples of big shot companies on how they solved the chicken-egg problem.

Uber

When uber first started their business, they paid car drivers to sign up in their app for a few months, building their supplies first. Then they marketed to customers about their service to get rides.

They first started small in Seattle, by hiring black and professional car drives to provide service.

Airbnb

Now, it is a popular website to book accommodations. But once upon a time, it started out by renting a bed and breakfast to people.

On how they gained the audience is totally unfair but users bought the trick and the company got his first 60,000 landlords.

The trick is Airbnb given opportunity to their host to post the listing in Craiglist which clicking upon leading to their website for finishing the publishing process and offering short-term rental customers. The Airbnb got customer emails by extracting from the craigslist website.

Etsy

Etsy an e-commerce site branded for selling handcrafted items and vintage items. They developed the website targeting these people to sell their handcrafted items on the website.

It all started when co-founders of Etsy website who were doing freelancing project which was designing forum of the handcrafting community. What they understood is that the community were feeling helpless of not having any online website facilitating to their requirements of selling. Hearing this, they got an idea to start their own website exclusively selling handcrafts and vintage items.

As they found their niche community, it was easy for them to target these people worldwide. They build the sellers first and then slowly website gained new customers.

Conclusion

In order to build your own marketplace, you need to think whether chasing your chickens or counting your eggs benefits your rental marketplace.

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Saadhika Devi
Saadhika Devi

Written by Saadhika Devi

Digital Marketer at RadicatStart. I write more tech news in here https://www.radicalstart.com/blog/

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