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Amazing research. I'd say, many people underestimate the phase of "1: Crack the chicken-and-egg problem ". I think there are 3 ways to do that: 1) Investing a
by stanislavb 7y ago
Amazing research. I'd say, many people underestimate the phase of "1: Crack the chicken-and-egg problem ".
I think there are 3 ways to do that:
1) Investing a lot of money in ads and PR (many people won't have the resources)
2) Being the first one in a niche with high demand (e.g. AirBnb)
3) Staying afloat long enough to get enough traction.
I've been bootstrapping a software marketplace for quite some time now - https://www.saashub.com https://www.saashub.com. A side-project initially and going full-time for the last few months. I can share, and believe, that SaaSHub is on the verge to crack the egg :) . It had 10k page-views yesterday. My expectations are that once it gets to 50-100k page-views a day, it would have cracked problem #1. Time will tell.
- dangrossman 7y agoYour website is a directory, not a marketplace.
- stanislavb 7y agoWhat should I change to make it a marketplace?
- dangrossman 7y agoIf I were to sign up and say I want a cloud backup service, and several cloud backup service providers give me quotes, and I can pick one and pay for it right then, that's a SaaS marketplace. You've connected buyers and sellers, creating transactions on your site. A self-made list of companies, nobody needs accounts, you can't buy anything just click links to external websites... that's a directory. It's the Yellow Pages. And your business model of selling featured listings is the same as the Yellow Pages.
- stanislavb 7y agoI dunno. Here it is the definition from the article: "A marketplace business is one that (1) connects demand (i.e. people who want a thing) with (2) supply (i.e. people who have that thing), and (3) leads to a financial transaction. These businesses do not generally own any supply, do not provide products or services directly, and (eventually) handle the money being exchanged. Simply put, their job is to provide a platform where the supply and demand efficiently find each other and transact successfully." There's demand, supply and people eventually transact. The only missing part is handling the exchange of money. Let's take a Sunday Farmers' Market, for example. It's a marketplace happening in the backyard of your school. That marketplace provides the platform for people to exchange goods and services and does not do anything related to money exchange. It just sells market spots to the farmers.
- dangrossman 7y agoLike all of the examples, a Sunday Farmer's Market has a chicken-and-egg problem in that it doesn't work without a critical mass of both supply and demand, buyers and vendors. Buyers don't want to go to a market without vendors, vendors don't want to set up in a market without buyers. A directory has no chicken-and-egg problem. You have a list of businesses, who don't have to set up at your market at all since there isn't one. Any buyer that shows up at your directory can get value from it, since you're just pointing them to the business somewhere else. You facilitate no transaction. You're not even transaction-focused, you're research-focused, with reviews and alternatives and all that. Vendors don't have to set up in your market, you can simply create their listing for them since it's just a directory. You're the Yellow Pages, not the Farmer's Market. There's nothing wrong with that, but this series of articles doesn't apply to your site, as it's not a marketplace.
- stanislavb 7y agoIs AngelList a "marketplace" or a "directory"?
- dangrossman 7y agoI don't use their site, and we're not talking about it, we're talking about yours. There are no internet police that are going to come arrest you for calling your directory a marketplace if that's the branding you prefer. No need to be defensive, continue on.
- stanislavb 7y agoOK
- mmahemoff 7y agoA marketplace. It connects startups with angels and job seekers.
- stanislavb 7y agoMate, did you read the article? You have AngelList given as an example of a "Marketplace". How is AngelList more a marketplace compared to SaaSHub?
- travbrack 7y agoYou're working on this full time? It looks like this site isn't monetized at all. Did I miss something?
- stanislavb 7y agoThere are featured listings with a monthly subscription.
- Kiro 7y agoI'm working full-time on a project without any monetization. I have a little bit of savings but live frugally so my runway is more or less infinite.
- stanislavb 7y agoOut of curiosity - why the downvotes :)?
- rabidrat 7y agoI didn't downvote you, but as a tangent, on your /about page you say: > I won a 3rd place (missed the first one because of a careless mistake) and I found this kind of funny, because the only reason I could get to your about page was by stripping the ".html" from the actual link on your website. This is not a blanket judgment of your character; but you may have a quality control issue.
- stanislavb 7y agoI'm not sure what you are talking about ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- rabidrat 7y agoOn your home page, click the "about" button, you get a 404.
- green1 7y agoHis about page doesn't 404. Nor does it contain the text you quoted in your previous reply and his main page does not link to /about.html. In fact even if you deliberately add .html to the about page URL it just redirects to /about anyway, which makes your comments even more baffling.