What team structure is best suited for creating a marketplace like Airbnb?
In my opinion, it will be more useful if we start with analysis the fact why the marketplace business it so successful now.
Today, there are more than 40 marketplaces in the world with a stocks comprising of more than $1 billion. And you need just look at the screen of your smartphone to see the most popular from them. I mean such marketplaces as Uber, Airbnb, Etsy etc.
Let’s talk about Airbnb.
Why do you use it? The answer is so easy: This apartment search platform solves the problem with finding any type of apartment and make this process very comfortably.
Until recently, finding a good apartment in an unfamiliar city or even a country was a real challenge, but Airbnb solved this problem once and forever. And this shows again how marketplaces surpassed online stores.
Unlike online stores that sell goods from a warehouse, marketplace services aggregate the offers of suppliers of goods or services on one site. Then, they provide convenient tools for searching, assist in conducting transactions, and regulate the interaction between the client and the supplier. The presence of third parties — suppliers — makes the model of the market more complex than the usual business models in e-commerce, but they are more flexible and easier to scale.
Choosing the separate niche with focusing on one type of product or service (for Airbnb it is the apartment rental service) allows marketplace startups to work better and be more mobile than the competitors. Moreover, the marketplace model is stable from the point of view of monetization prospects, and the “mathematics” of profit/loss per customer is very clear.
Well, since there is no doubt about the usefulness of online marketplaces and their future prospects, it’s time to return to the question of a team that could create the profitable marketplace.
Do not forget that the marketplace is not just the online store! Therefore, in order to implement a successful marketplace project and have the chance to compete in the choosing niche, you should use the help of experts with unique understanding and expertise in online marketplace development.
It is assumed that the composition of the team is as follows:
- CTO
- Business analyst
- Project Manager
- Senior/Middle back-end developer
- Senior/Middle front-end developers
- Designer
- QA team
- Marketing team
Learn more about a marketplace boom in 2018 here: Marketplaces in 2018 — Riding The Wave Of Hype
