How Marketplaces Are Evolving (Jeff Chat Clip)

I'd love to learn a little bit more about how you see things evolving right now for those that are building marketplaces.

Well, in marketplaces specifically, we've had an overarching thesis in that marketplaces, we call it Marketplaces 3.0, and the concept is that marketplaces are moving from a listing-based model to a transactional model. And so you've seen that with classified sites going transactional. And so we think that more and more marketplaces are building out functions which help them own more of the transaction and help bring it all online. So, I mean, a perfect example of this is Uber. Now, you, you know, Uber is taking care of the payments, Uber's taking care of the dispatch, Uber's taking care of customer reviews and safety and trust and so forth. So that's a continued theme that we see across verticals. We're investing in a lot of B2B marketplaces now, and many of those are starting to build in their own payments, even lending. So we think that going forward, marketplaces will continue to be more and more, if not managed, transactional. And so that's a trend that we're seeing. In terms of the market writ large, it's never been a better time to start a marketplace. Capital is overflowing everywhere. And I think marketplaces are at the forefront of the digital transformation that we're seeing in the economy. And so companies, it's interesting, we have this internal tension all the time. Valuations have never been higher, but company growth metrics have never been higher either. We're seeing more companies growing faster than we ever have before. So it is really an amazing time to be in early-stage startups.