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How marketplaces win: Liquidity, growth levers, quality, and more | Benjamin Lauzier (Lyft, Thumbtack, Reforge)

29 Sept 2024 23 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Benjamin LauzierLenny Rachitsky

Claim mix

belief 11evaluation 3recommendation 2commitment 2preference 2observation 2uncertainty 1

Evidence policy

Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

23 published records

01 / recommendation

Recommends Misbehaving: The Makings of Behavioral Economics. Recommends Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Recommends Immune.

“I'll give you books in different directions. One is Misbehaving: The Makings of Behavioral Economics. I'm really interested in behavioral economics, I love this intersection between economics and human psychology. It's a great analogy for product, so that's a great introduction to this field. The second book that I recommend a lot is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein. I've always felt curious about a lot of things, but it's made me feel like I'm decent at many things but I'm good at nothing. I'm very good at nothing. And so, even in my career I see all those pianists who are like machine learning gurus leading conferences on weekends that are contributing to think tanks, I just felt like a generalist. So, if you feel this way, this is a good book to make you feel a little bit better by yourself and your imposter syndrome. At least it did for me. And last one, nothing to do with business, but Immune, by Philipp Dettmer. This is the creator of the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt. I don't know if I'm pronouncing this right, but it's a science channel. If you're even remotely curious about how your body works, how your immune system works, it's an amazing book that's really, really fun to read, super entertaining, and just great biology and fun book, I promise.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

02 / belief

I think there's two types of challenges, I guess there's when you're talking about creating a marketplace, and then there's when you're talking about scaling a marketplace.

“I think there's two types of challenges, I guess there's when you're talking about creating a marketplace, and then there's when you're talking about scaling a marketplace.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

03 / belief

I think you want this long tail of buyers and sellers without a handful of big players controlling the market, because this is where you can provide value by doing this job of aggregation.

“I think you want this long tail of buyers and sellers without a handful of big players controlling the market, because this is where you can provide value by doing this job of aggregation.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

04 / uncertainty

You would think that the Lyft passenger and driver is more likely to flip back and forth between the two. I don't know, I don't know.

“You would think that the Lyft passenger and driver is more likely to flip back and forth between the two. I don't know, I don't know.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

05 / belief

In my experience, it's almost always the supply side is what you need to work on, because once you have awesome supply, people are going to be really excited to tap it.

“In my experience, it's almost always the supply side is what you need to work on, because once you have awesome supply, people are going to be really excited to tap it.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

06 / belief

If you think about the ETA, when you ask explicitly you're like, "Yeah, sure, I want a newer car," and you slide it to 2020 not realizing that you just lost 10 minutes because now we had a great driver, but they have a Honda Civic from 2018, and it's not the special that you wanted. So, I think people who build marketplaces tend to want to give a lot of control to the users because this is what users want, or this is what comes up oftentimes in user feedback like, "Oh, we have those two distinct group of users.

“If you think about the ETA, when you ask explicitly you're like, "Yeah, sure, I want a newer car," and you slide it to 2020 not realizing that you just lost 10 minutes because now we had a great driver, but they have a Honda Civic from 2018, and it's not the special that you wanted. So, I think people who build marketplaces tend to want to give a lot of control to the users because this is what users want, or this is what comes up oftentimes in user feedback like, "Oh, we have those two distinct group of users.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

07 / belief

Find a way to hack one side, play one player mode is what it's also called sometimes, but try to find a way to tap into existing channels that have one side of your marketplace already latent. And so again, you have countless businesses that if you've been built off of Craigslist, I think Thumbtack was partially one of them, and the idea was like, "Hey, we can find all those great pros on Thumbtack.

“Find a way to hack one side, play one player mode is what it's also called sometimes, but try to find a way to tap into existing channels that have one side of your marketplace already latent. And so again, you have countless businesses that if you've been built off of Craigslist, I think Thumbtack was partially one of them, and the idea was like, "Hey, we can find all those great pros on Thumbtack.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

08 / belief

I'm following my own advice, and I'm one jumpstarting one side of the marketplace, the health advocates were like jumpstarting this side for now, and we're only focusing on what I think is going be the hardest side for us, and it's going to be demand.

“I'm following my own advice, and I'm one jumpstarting one side of the marketplace, the health advocates were like jumpstarting this side for now, and we're only focusing on what I think is going be the hardest side for us, and it's going to be demand.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

10 / belief

I think that's missing the point that we're humans, and I think sometimes we act in ways that are non-deterministic or counterintuitive. But my take is I'm a huge believer in market forces and empowerment, so provide guardrails for what a good experience is in your marketplace, set a clear bar for quality, and provide the right coaching and tools for supply to be successful, and then take a step back and see where the gaps are and invest more in hands-on tactics just to close those gaps more specifically.

“I think that's missing the point that we're humans, and I think sometimes we act in ways that are non-deterministic or counterintuitive. But my take is I'm a huge believer in market forces and empowerment, so provide guardrails for what a good experience is in your marketplace, set a clear bar for quality, and provide the right coaching and tools for supply to be successful, and then take a step back and see where the gaps are and invest more in hands-on tactics just to close those gaps more specifically.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

11 / belief

Usually we don't spend time on this sort of stuff, but you're working on something very cool that I think is going to be really helpful to a lot of people in a really meaningful way.

“Usually we don't spend time on this sort of stuff, but you're working on something very cool that I think is going to be really helpful to a lot of people in a really meaningful way.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

13 / belief

You need to be intentional about the quality that you aim to provide, and I think a lot of companies don't have necessarily that intentionality and you have this constant push of supply, "If only we'd lower our bar a little bit, we could get more supply.

“You need to be intentional about the quality that you aim to provide, and I think a lot of companies don't have necessarily that intentionality and you have this constant push of supply, "If only we'd lower our bar a little bit, we could get more supply.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

15 / preference

I'll give some sort of small pointers that have helped at least some of the companies that I've talked to. But the one is equity, I think there's a desire from a lot of the founders that I talk to, to give equity to employees, but because it's not in the culture yet I think employees also have an under-appreciation for equity.

“I'll give some sort of small pointers that have helped at least some of the companies that I've talked to. But the one is equity, I think there's a desire from a lot of the founders that I talk to, to give equity to employees, but because it's not in the culture yet I think employees also have an under-appreciation for equity.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

16 / evaluation

You want to make sure that you have a compelling enough value proposition on both sides of the marketplace, and very often at the beginning you find product market fit on the demand side, but you realize it's not compelling enough for your suppliers because your margins are too high or something like that.

“You want to make sure that you have a compelling enough value proposition on both sides of the marketplace, and very often at the beginning you find product market fit on the demand side, but you realize it's not compelling enough for your suppliers because your margins are too high or something like that.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

17 / preference

I think the metric that I like the most is a predictor of liquidity. So your liquidity might be, it's typically a measure of demand utilization.

“I think the metric that I like the most is a predictor of liquidity. So your liquidity might be, it's typically a measure of demand utilization.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

19 / commitment

" Because if you control your supply, then there can be legally classified as employees and be entitled to a whole bunch of benefits. So, my take on this in general is I'm a huge believer, and it really depends on the type of company I should say, obviously, but my take is I'm a huge believer in market forces and empowerment.

“" Because if you control your supply, then there can be legally classified as employees and be entitled to a whole bunch of benefits. So, my take on this in general is I'm a huge believer, and it really depends on the type of company I should say, obviously, but my take is I'm a huge believer in market forces and empowerment.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

20 / evaluation

The other thing that I think is important to talk about briefly is when you're thinking about building a marketplace, a lot of times they fail because the business model just doesn't work.

“The other thing that I think is important to talk about briefly is when you're thinking about building a marketplace, a lot of times they fail because the business model just doesn't work.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

21 / observation

It differs from the stereotype of the CS degree, Stanford dropout that you have in Silicon Valley. And I think because of a few of those things that I just mentioned, less liquid job market, but also less liquid financial markets, the last thing that I've observed that's interesting that's also around ownership I guess, is equity is much less meaningful in France.

“It differs from the stereotype of the CS degree, Stanford dropout that you have in Silicon Valley. And I think because of a few of those things that I just mentioned, less liquid job market, but also less liquid financial markets, the last thing that I've observed that's interesting that's also around ownership I guess, is equity is much less meaningful in France.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

22 / evaluation

Interesting. So, essentially COVID really effed them because their strategy was always about transportation, and when nobody needs a ride and people want food, strategically Uber made a really good move expanding into food delivery, which I think was a bigger business than rides for a long time.

“Interesting. So, essentially COVID really effed them because their strategy was always about transportation, and when nobody needs a ride and people want food, strategically Uber made a really good move expanding into food delivery, which I think was a bigger business than rides for a long time.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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