New marketplaces still have room to grow when the right technology arrives. GPS, LTE, and crypto each unlocked different opportunities, though crypto got sidetracked by speculation. Large language models could now automate the messy work of connecting buyers and sellers in untouched niches.
Chapters
I'm sure you see so many different, you know, marketplaces and speak with a lot of different founders. So are there any kind of misconceptions that you're seeing when it comes to maybe early-stage marketplaces right now?
Misconceptions in early-stage marketplaces? Part of the question is, man, is all the white space gone? You know, and the, I'm, you know, I see some people shaking their heads like, I don't think so. But It is going to take different tools. And, you know, in consumer social, what tends to happen— or not just consumer social, consumer— there tends to be a technology catalyst that creates a new wave of companies. You know, the last obvious thing was this guy, but it was, you know, adding the camera and then the, you know, with GPS, like it was these types of things that created a new, I always think of as like a palette. Like you have all these components and then a founder sees that palette, is able to draw something with that. That was like the last, I mean, you know, internet getting better, LTE, you know, all those things made a big difference. Now, you know, then there was the crypto wave and, you know, honestly, I'm still freaking disappointed by that. Like I still think NFTs are really freaking cool. Just the idea of like digital scarcity is so provocative to me. We have 2 investments in that space. I sold one of them to OpenAI, the other one, Sorare, just an incredible team and product in kind of fantasy soccer. But as you guys all know, that space just got completely consumed by speculation. And I think aided and abetted by some crypto funds. And now we have large language models. And so the question is, does large language model— like, I think a question is like, this is clearly a technology catalyst. I see it completely transforming the type of work people, you know, the type of offerings people can sell. Does it make it possible for some types of marketplaces that previously were not touchable because they were, you know, just for whatever reason, it was long tail, like you couldn't automate too much, as much outreach as you needed, like there was, you know, too much unstructured data, whatever it is. Is there something that changes fundamentally with large language models? Maybe, you know, so anyway, Airbnb wasn't a technology catalyst, it was a founder catalyst. And so it's not always the case that there is a technology catalyst, but this is certainly a rich time to be dreaming.
