Jeff breaks down why vertical marketplaces like Airbnb, Etsy, and SeatGeek beat horizontal classifieds, and where the next opportunities are. He points to B2B marketplaces and enablement tools like Bolt, plus the chance to take proven models to new countries.
What are some kind of industries or maybe markets where you see some unique opportunities exist for marketplaces and maybe even some specific examples of marketplaces that you'd like to see exist?
Sure. So the continued verticalization of horizontal marketplaces is something that we continue to invest in. So horizontal marketplaces being like a Craigslist, typical classified sites. We believe that, and we're seeing that within one of these horizontal marketplaces, you can build vertical marketplaces with very specific feature sets. The quintessential example is Airbnb. When you go vertical, now you can start looking at actually what it looks like inside the property, and you can offer very real estate-specific features. Or if you go on a SeatGeek or a StubHub, you can see where in the arena you're sitting. These are things that traditional classifieds horizontal platforms cannot offer. And of course, that applies to many, many, many different categories. And so we believe that most of these market sizes are dramatically underestimated. I mean, you look at Etsy, which was like craft goods, I think their market cap's north of $40 billion now. It might be even way higher than that. I haven't checked recently, but who would've thought a couple years ago that Etsy could be as big as it is now? So we're investors in some very niche marketplaces. We're in a trading card games marketplace called TCGPlayer. That's largely Magic: The Gathering, but they're doing hundreds of millions of dollars of GMV this year. We've seen marketplaces for pool rentals like Swimply, which is doing very, very well. We're not investors in that one, but we're looking at it actively. We're investors in a stamps marketplace called Hip Stamps. We're in a pizza ordering marketplace, which people think is niche, but it's actually not at all niche. So Slice, is, you can think of it like a Shopify for restaurants. They don't take care of the delivery, but they do, they offer, they basically offer a back office function and they help with online ordering and even phone ordering for pizza places. They're doing north of a billion of GMV. So these marketplaces, which are thought of as niche, are way bigger than people realize. The other area which we're really excited about is B2B marketplaces. in general, B2B, we feel like, is over a decade behind B2C in terms of digital transformation. So there is a— and trillions of dollars are being transacted using like the quintessential, the stereotypical pen and paper and spreadsheet. And it really is true. And so bringing B2B commerce online continues to be a massive opportunity all around the world. And so in addition to the actual marketplaces, we're also seeing marketplace enablement. So we're seeing a big trend now in bringing online checkout to B2B marketplaces, just like you see with B2C. So Bolt is a really exciting B2C marketplace enabler offering, you know, online smooth, quick online checkout. We're seeing startups doing that for B2B now. And in terms of exciting B2B marketplaces, we're in one called Node, which is a petrochemicals marketplace that's doing fantastically well. We're in a truck driver marketplace called Tread based out of Canada. We're in Workrise, which is an oil rig staffing marketplace. We're in Job and Talent in Europe, which is a gig economy staffing marketplace. So the opportunities go on and on and on. And not only can you find interesting categories, but with our approach, you can actually look at the same category in the same model and apply it across different geographies. So we get excited about, call it Node, the petrochemicals marketplace in the US. Maybe we'll invest in a Node for LATAM or a Node for Europe or things like that. So lots and lots of opportunities at the moment.
Yeah. There's a lot of great examples that you just gave us. And I love the Slice one too. So that's a really cool marketplace. Yeah.
And by the way, we've looked at Slice for Chinese food because the supply side is actually different. There's not much overlap between the, you know, the third-generation pizza shop and then the, you know, the Chinese restaurant. You can actually potentially even do verticals by cuisine, verticals by geo. So we've looked at like Slice for LATAM. Obviously, it might not be pizza in LATAM, but, but the same concept of, of enabling these independent, these SME merchants and helping run back-office operations for them.
