If you could go right back to before you joined Outdoorsy, what would you tell yourself about marketplaces?

Max BrunCEO at MConsulting

Colin Gardiner Sharing Parting Marketplace Advice

28 Aug 2024 · 2 min

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1:45

In this interview segment, Colin Gardiner reflects on the lessons he wishes he had known before joining the marketplace platform Outdoorsy. He emphasizes the need for patience, noting that the network effect of a successful marketplace is subtle and compounds over time, much like interest. Gardiner advises focusing on the core daily activities of driving supply and demand, rather than getting distracted by busywork. He warns that early investment in organic search, brand building, and other long‑term channels may feel slow and costly, but they are essential for scaling later. The overarching theme is the concept of "patient capital"—deliberate, measured product development and acquisition of supply and demand, trusting that the network effect will ultimately carry the business forward.

Questions this video answers

Be more patient, recognize the subtle network effect, focus on daily supply‑demand basics, invest early in organic search and brand building despite slow returns, and adopt a patient‑capital mindset for product development and acquisition.

Chapters

if you could go right back to, you know, before you joined Outdoorsy, you know, what would you tell yourself about marketplaces?
I think I would tell myself to be more patient and that, and realize that like when you have a marketplace that's working, it's very hard to see the subtle undercurrent of the network effect in the moment, right? And you'll see glimpses of it, but that It's actually going and that you're probably realistically, if you're, you have a winner here, you're probably a monkey on a rocket ship. And that a lot of the things that you do that you think are working or busywork around it aren't actually as useful as just the basics of driving supply and demand every day. And just remembering that the more you do of that, the more powerful the network effect becomes. And it just compounds over time and it's like compounding interest. It's just like, looks like nothing. And then all of a sudden it's something big. And so that's what I remind myself is just be more patient on it. And what that implication of that is, is that like investing in channels like organic search or building a brand or all these things like early stage just seem insane and crazy and just not fast enough. right? For your burn rate. But if you don't do those things, you may not be able to like scale really well later. And I think that's the thing that I remind myself is like patient capital, patient about like deliberate product development and acquisition of supply and demand. Just being really patient about it and knowing that that network effect's gonna carry you in the long run.