Ben Gilbert: preference

Transcript context

…Yeah. The one I always think of here is potentially adding insurance to a transaction like Airbnb's million-dollar insurance policy. I won't just wire someone money directly, I will pay Airbnb's ridiculous fees because it's kind of nice to have that insurance policy and them as a trusted facilitator of the transaction. Ben, I think you're touching on a good point, which is that platforms are naturally also competing with their own customers. Because what if your customers go directly to each other, buyers and sellers just transact off you? As a platform, you have to first prove that you provide enough value that they should pay you a cut and stay on the platform. That's one front that every platform has to think about and we call it table stakes. The second issue that a platform must think about is, what do you offer is that differential? So the insurance program of Airbnb, could a competitor also offer a similar insurance program and achieve a similar value add to your customers? There are two layers of questions that, comparatively, we also have to think about.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.