Vertical marketplaces outperform horizontal ones by optimizing for specific use cases
Jeff Jordan · a16z Podcast | People Marketplaces Take On One of the Last Great E-Commerce Opportunities: Groceries · Jan 2, 2019 · at 11:45
Jeff Jordan, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, contrasts early horizontal service platforms like TaskRabbit with vertical-specific marketplaces like Lyft, Instacart, and DoorDash.
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“Early in people marketplaces, you had the horizontals of TaskRabbit or Zarli, where you could ask people to do anything, and the paradox of choice and the lack of optimization against specific verticals, no one knew what to do with it, so they really didn't do much of anything with it. But the ones that seem to be getting the traction, you know, lift in cars, you know, home joy in home cleaning, Instacart in grocery delivery, DoorDash, and Caviar in food deliveries, are picking a vertical and optimizing for it.”
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