Uber started out in San Francisco as a simple on demand cab service. Today, no company better exemplifies the power of platforms in an era where digital and physical environments are beginning to merge.
Toptal is a two-sided marketplace that matches freelancers who are looking for work on one side, with companies looking to hire temporary workers on the other side. Even though it competed with established large platforms, the company managed to grow faster than the market and establish a successful platform by focusing on the ‘high-end’ part of the market.
Peer-to-peer used car marketplace Beepi has gone from a successful $149MM capital raise to a desperate fire sale in less than four years. What led the company to take a turn for the worse?
Airbnb has cleverly built a platform to create trust among complete strangers.
OfferUp is transforming how we sell used goods online and is termed a “Craiglist killer”. This post discusses how they ended up creating and capturing this value
In less than 10 years Eventbrite has established itself as a major force in the ticketing industry. Longer term, the company’s ultimate goal is to become not just a technology provider for individual ticket sellers, but rather a robust discovery platform for consumers to find out what is happening in the world around them.
StyleSeat has developed a two-sided marketplace for the historically fragmented beauty industry, and is betting on network effects as it prioritizes quick growth of its user base.
