AirBnB built their software pretty fast too. But then they had to literally fly around the country onboarding their first listings by hand: helping the property

AirBnB built their software pretty fast too. But then they had to literally fly around the country onboarding their first listings by hand: helping the property owners take good pictures, write enticing descriptions, etc. Scaling a two-sided market app is hard. You have to carefully increase the number of sellers and buyers together. If it gets too lopsided in either direction, people get frustrated and give up. AirBnB, like Uber, also benefited from a bunch of earned media because the idea seemed novel at the time. Reporters were interested in the concept. These days a competitor would need to spend like crazy on paid media to grow mindshare, or have some new twist that interests reporters.