S1E27 - Branden Cobb - How to build a marketplace

My next guest has over 15 years of marketing experience with an emphasis on building marketplace businesses. A marketplace is an application with two audiences on one platform. Some examples you may be familiar with include Zillow, Airbnb, Etsy, Groupon, and Ebay. This is not an easy business to start because you have to figure out what type of marketing and sales strategies attract each audience. In this episode, we talk about how to start a marketplace, how to bootstrap marketing, and how to balance growth between the two audiences. Please welcome Branden Cobb. Key Timecodes (00:53) - Show intro and background history (01:38) - His definition of marketplace (02:38) - Why he decided to focus on this business model (03:33) - How he started with this business model (06:13) - Deeper into his business model and lessons learned (13:32) - Is he running ads to monetize or focusing on consumers? (14:51) - Deeper into his takeaways and strategies (16:42) - What are his strategies to get a viral effect (21:02) - Is he working with venture capital or bootstrapped investors? (23:12) - A bit about the scalability of that model (24:47) - A key takeaway from the guest (27:37) - What is the worst advice he ever received (28:16) - What is the best advice he ever received (29:44) - Guest contacts Payback Time Podcast Payback Time is a podcast for investors. The goal of this podcast is to help make investing approachable and easy to understand. We will interview beginner and experienced investors and ask them to share stories on how they got started, what challenges they faced, what mistakes they made, and what strategy works for them today. The overall objective is to provide you with a roadmap that helps you become a better investor.