Reham Fagiri Sharing Parting Marketplace Advice

31 Oct 2024 · 2 min

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In this interview excerpt, Reham Fagiri reflects on the challenges of building a marketplace, emphasizing the classic chicken‑and‑egg problem of needing two sides to transact. She advises founders to adopt a mindset of rapid testing and frequent iteration, and to focus on discovering a "power customer" or "power seller" that can drive network effects. She shares a concrete lesson from her own experience at Appdeco: initially assuming interior designers and real‑estate agents would be the power customers proved wrong, but persistence and data‑driven experimentation eventually led to identifying the true power player. The overall message is that marketplaces are hard but rewarding once the right leverage point is found.

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You actually had one last question before we kind of wrap things up. And that's if you could go right back to before you started Appdeco, you know, what would you tell yourself about marketplaces? Ooh, marketplaces are hard.
They're hard, you know, trying to get, you know, 2 customers to make one transaction. But once you figure it out, they're a lot of fun. And, you know, you can like greedy you know, see it flourish. So just, you know, so I think like just coming with that understanding and just like the chicken and egg is real and just having an open mind around like, you know, trying different things and see what works. Just because it worked for us, it may not work for you. But just like, you know, I think it's just important to have that perspective of just like quick testing, lots of iteration. And see power sellers or power customers, whether it's your supply constraint or demand constraint, is key. Like if you look at eBay or, you know, Airbnb or any of these larger companies at this stage, they all have a power customer. Figure out who your power customer is. And so for us, I'll just, you know, end with this. Like we thought our power customer would be interior designers and real estate agents because like common sense, right? Like these people are moving companies or what have you, right? We tried all that in the beginning and none of it worked. Like it's just the— it wasn't aligned, but we just didn't give up. We just kept trying. Like there has to be, you know, based on our data, like there has to be some sort of a power player here. And then we eventually landed on it. Just keep trying.