Building a Marketplace Business

How to Start a Marketplace!

Eren Bali, Chairman & Co-founder of Udemy!

!Marketplace for Online Courses

Source: Udemy!

Students

3 Million Published Courses

17 Thousand Courses Completed

2.2 Million Hours Raised

$48 Million

Why!

Desire To Learn + Internet = Hope!

The Big Vision!

Let Anyone Learn !Anything Online!

Let Anyone Learn Anything Online!

100’s of Millions of People Around The

World

100’s of thousands of different subjects,

different languages

Marketplace!

Technology!Community!Brand!Operations!

… and also!

•  Strong Network Effect!•  High Competitive Barrier!•  Scalable Business Model!•  Blah blah!

Designing a Marketplace!

The Service Chain!

•  Connect Supply & Demand: Marketplace + Supply!•  Discovery: Decentralized vs Curated vs Centralized!•  Pricing: Decentralized vs Centralized!•  Payment: Decentralized vs Centralized!•  Service / Product: Supply!•  Customer Experience: Decentralized vs Centralized!•  Support: Decentralized vs Centralized!

Centralization vs Decentralization!

Decentralized Centralized

The Spawn of Craigslist!

Getting Initial Traction!

? ?

(a.k.a. solving the chicken-egg problem)!

Liquidity isn’t the most important thing. It’s the only thing. Simon Rothman, Greylock Ventures

Do Things That Don’t Scale! Paul Graham, YCombinator

Fake The Chicken!

Provide value via curation and user experience

Be Your Own Supply!

(First 3 paid courses on Udemy. They were created by us)

Focus on a Segment à Expand!ebay: Collectibles Facebook: Harvard Yelp: Restaurants in San Francisco Uber: Luxury & San Francisco

Have Your Supply Bring Demand!

Create Success Stories!

More Early Growth Ideas!

•  Provide a Utility Function!–  OpenTable!

•  Leverage 3rd Party Channels for Distribution!–  Udemy à Daily Deal Sites and Newsletters!–  AirBnb à Craigslist!

•  Provide a Magical Experience to Early Users(Tip: Doesn’t Need to Scale)!

!

Once You Have Critical Mass!

enjoy it ;)!

Additional Reading!

•  http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/19/how-to-structure-a-marketplace/!•  http://firstround.com/article/How-Modern-Marketplaces-Like-Uber-Airbnb-

Build-Trust-to-Hit-Liquidity!•  http://abovethecrowd.com/2012/11/13/all-markets-are-not-created-equal-10-

factors-to-consider-when-evaluating-digital-marketplaces/!•  http://cdixon.org/2012/11/23/some-problems-are-so-hard-they-need-to-be-

solved-piece-by-piece/!•  http://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/345941486/the-spawn-of-craigslist-like-

most-vcs-that-focus!•  http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2013/04/02/how-to-grow-a-

marketplace/!•  http://growthhackers.com/companies/belly/!

!

Thanks!@erenbali!