Marketplace Defensibility With The Evolution Of Marketplaces

we're constantly seeing kind of marketplaces, you know, being reinvented, you know, with the new entrants versus kind of incumbents. So how do you think about marketplace defensibility?

So I mean, I think defensibility is one of the things that, one of the main things to always worry about. I remember there's this very good post by Not Boring. So, you know, he said like a lot of people think like defensibility is something that you worry about reaching product market fit. And that's a mistake because the point is if you reach product market fit, then everybody's gonna jump in. So it might be too late. So you should actually, because once the idea, it's obvious that this is a good idea, then that's where you should be already defensible. Otherwise you're gonna be drowned in competition. So you should think about it very, very early on. So certainly part of the spirit of those 6 questions is to get at defensibility. So again, for example, if multi-homing, if you provide incentives for your buyers and sellers to mostly stick exclusively with you, that makes you more defensible. If the network effects are stronger, you're more defensible. Another criteria, so for example, global. Yeah, if you have a global marketplace, if you manage to get past the chicken neck problem, there's going to be more defensible than local network effect marketplaces because if it's just local, you start in the cities A and B, I could start in cities C and D, right? So like it makes it easier to compete. There's a few other dimensions in there which we haven't spoken about. So for example, I'd rather, so in terms of defensibility, I'd much prefer marketplaces where the supply side is heavily differentiated as opposed to commodities. commodity, right? So that's a pretty big one. A good example would be, so think about Uber and Lyft. I mean, they're good businesses, but I think everybody sees that there's an issue, which is the supply side is undifferentiated. I'm sorry, these are drivers, like as long as they can drive and they have a car, like we don't really care, right? Airbnb, there's more, definitely more differentiation. Like 2 apartments are not quite the same. If you think about, I don't know, Cameo or like there, there are other more extreme examples, right? Yeah. 2 celebrities are not the same. So differentiation makes the marketplace more defensible. If it's commodity, then everybody can just, any other marketplace can pull from the same undifferentiated supply. So it makes it less defensible.