Thread by @lennysan

Part 4 of my series on Marketplace Growth is now live.

Learn how Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber and today’s biggest marketplaces drove early DEMAND.

Inside:
1. Top 12 growth drivers
2. What DIDN’T work
3. Stories of doing things that don’t scale

More below👇
lennyrachitsky.com/p/how-to-kicks…

1/ Top 12 drivers of early marketplace growth:

1. WOM (50% of companies)
2. Supply drove demand (40%)
3. SEO (40%)
4. Perf marketing (35%)
5. PR (35%)
6. Loops (30%)
7. Referrals
8. Direct sales
9. Events
10. Single-player mode
11. Partnerships
12. Mobile

2/ WOM:

“WOM was huge. Early days, 50-60% WOM” @andrewchen, Uber

“WOM was by far the biggest driver early-on. Way over 50% on the guest side, and way over 70% on the host side.” @gustaf, Airbnb

“WOM was huge early on. That was the reason behind the pink mustache” @Bnjii, Lyft

3/ Supply drove demand:

“Organizers had built in demand they brought w/ them” @tmendelsohn, Eventbrite

“Restaurants did a lot of the marketing for us.” @micahmoreau, DoorDash

“Sellers were doing their own grassroots marketing, became a big growth driver” @nickeyskarstad, Etsy

4/ SEO:

“SEO...ended up being 80-90% of our growth” @sanderdaniels, Thumbtack

“SEO was 30% of all new users (our #1 lever)” @onecaseman, GrubHub

“SEO was one of our main early growth levers” @bmrothenberg, Eventbrite

5/ Performance marketing:

“Had we not done online marketing early on, we wouldn’t have been as big as we were today” @gustaf, Airbnb

“Most of our customer acquisition was through Google Ads” @djrosent, Rover

“Performance marketing was very significant early on.” @Bnjii, Lyft

6/ PR:

“Zillow is a unique story in that we started our growth with PR” @natemoch, Zillow

“Early on, our marketing strategy was mainly focused on driving positive WoM and press” @jimbovig, TaskRabbit

7/ Read the post for the rest 👌

Including what DIDN’T work for companies, for example:

“Paid marketing was not a big lever for us — we didn't have the cash or revenue model to support until we were many years in!” @sanderdaniels, Thumbtack
lennyrachitsky.com/p/how-to-kicks…

8/ And finally, as a bonus (and a reminder of how hard it is to build a company), I’ve included a bunch of enlightening stories and lessons of scrappiness and hustle...

9/ “The real answer in how you onboard supply or demand in a cold-start marketplace is you do whatever it takes. Is this going to work? No? Ok, well is this going to work? No? Keep trying until it works.” @julien, Breather

10/ “The reason we won the Cheesecake Factory — it’s on the sixth floor of the mall, by the way — is because we had dashers just dedicated to running up and down the elevator to handoff the food, instead waiting for a dasher to park.” @micahmoreau, DoorDash

11/ “We had to brute forcing it with a mediocre product, which bought us the time to survive and one day focus on building a great product (which we’ve now been able to do)” @sanderdaniels, Thumbtack

12/ Much much more in the full post. And coming next week — Phase 2: Scaling Your Marketplace

lennyrachitsky.com/p/how-to-kicks…

13/ Again, ❤️ 🙏 @andrewchen @nivi @bnjii @bmrothenberg @onecaseman @danhockenmaier @mcfunley @djrosent @gokulr @georgbauser @GiladHorev @gustaf @hunterwalk @jimbovig @julien @kaliforniakati @Max @micahmoreau @mduboe @nickeyskarstad @natemoch @sanderdaniels @talraviv @tmendelsohn