Max Brun explains how Peerspace shifted from a broad horizontal marketplace to focusing on three verticals: events, production, and meetings. The production niche exploded during COVID, and the company now uses demand data to decide when to expand into new categories or regions.
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worth noting that, you know, there's such a unique kind of, you know, selection of supply on PeerSpace. So how did you think about that when it comes to, you know, I think like the supply strategy and, you know, kind of growing that in the market?
Yeah. So things evolved definitely from market to market. It started with us going, you know, door to door, eventually became a really tight supply lead gen qualification outbound SEO process as well until we got more inbound coming in. So it kind of evolves with phases. And as we realized too that we can't just scale this marketplace by putting local people in every single market, which is kind of what we were doing. We wanted to become a sustainable business. And so that also drove some of this process as we went over time. But one thing that's unique to PeerSpace and possibly other marketplaces have this problem too, is we deliberately built a broad horizontal marketplace. And the reasoning for us was we have a single unit of underutilized supply. Why shouldn't they be able to capture demand for many different types of demand? The problem that creates a larger TAM and if you're ever trying to attract venture capital. You know, if you're, if you go to market with them and you say, hey, we're working on this really narrow niche, they're gonna question how big the market is. But for us, it's like you can have all kinds of events in the same space, and that's how we drive lots of bookings to our supply. What we learned over time is that that horizontal approach really creates a challenge for focus, and it also adds a ton of complexity. And how you analyze the marketplace. How do you look at the data and think about like, where, where do we have traction? Do we have product market fit? The bookings show that we did this, but what kind of bookings are they? And what part, you know, what geos within the market are we seeing this growth? And how do we talk about that in a way that's going to align us all internally and be able to pitch to investors or our board or whomever? So that lack of focus made things more complicated and we decided to focus our efforts first into primary verticals. So I mentioned events, production, and meetings, but you actually need to go much deeper than that. Like what kind of event, who is the target segment? And knowing that helps you focus, that relentless focus, I think, is what you really need if you're going to survive as a marketplace. You can have a vision for where the marketplace goes over time. But if you build for that vision early on, it's, it's kind of a recipe for disaster. Now I say that, you know, after us having, I don't know, been an exception to the rule. But the truth is, is we really did end up focusing over time when we started seeing traction in production. And this really happened to a large degree during COVID and kind of everybody being locked at home and meetings and events not really being viable, but like this insatiable need to create content was emerging. That's when we were like, okay, focus here, put everything into this growth channel against this audience. And that's where we really drove true product market fit for a specific audience. We looked at, you know, kind of indie producers and content creators and directors that wanted to be able to create content in a very turnkey manner, which our marketplace facilitated well. And then we built a bunch of additional features that were really speaking to that audience and helping them convert better, you know. So the business grew really fast. We couldn't pinpoint the specific source or like what channel, where is it driving from. I think it was a mix of macro trends and also us just being focused and ready to capitalize and not having to worry about all these other verticals and segments that we were looking after. So, you know, that led us over time at PeerSpace to ride the wave of each vertical. It's, you know, in retrospect, having the broad marketplace also helps you do that. But, you know, as one starts to cool off or you feel like growth isn't as attainable in one vertical, or maybe a certain geo is leaning really heavily into a different vertical, then, you know, we can put a strategy behind how we're going to achieve growth in those. And that's what the biggest marketplaces in the world have done. So you inevitably do get there. But I think really focusing is the most important thing. So, so yeah, I think, you know, last point I'd make is paying attention to the macro trends, really looking for those opportunities for your next move when you do decide like, okay, we want to expand our audience into this segment. We either want to go upmarket or we want to go cross-market to another vertical. That's, that's really important. And you need to think about your platform as what is your unique edge? For us, it was we wanted to really make this a transactional marketplace that reduced a lot of friction. I don't like using this word, but democratizing, you know, access to the space and just making it easier, right, than going through all these contracts and negotiations to put on a birthday party at a private venue, right? So, you know, what it— looking for that, those macro trends of seeing where, where's the avenue to like enter the market and create that wedge. Or what is your demand data, if you have any, show you you should be doing next? And, you know, how are you gonna get there?
