Thumbtack pros hated direct bookings because they preferred the thrill of sales
Benjamin Lauzier · How marketplaces win: Liquidity, growth levers, quality, more | Benjamin Lauzier (Lyft, Thumbtack) · Sep 29, 2024 · at 38:23
Benjamin Lauzier, former VP of Product and Growth at Thumbtack and Lyft marketplace product lead, explains how supplier psychology can resist automated marketplace efficiencies.
0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.9s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We knew we're going to improve the ROI by something like 20%, maybe. And we lost this and pros hated it. They hated it because they actually subconsciously, like, they liked the spill of the sale, right? They loved this contact with customer. And they sometimes, like, completely overestimated their ability to close a customer.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Benjamin Lauzier
Product-market fit can exist independently of functional marketplace dynamics
“Maybe this is a hot take, but I feel like product market fit is independent of your marketplace dynamics. You might have, like, you know, a great product, and it provides amazing value to both sides, but you have yet to crack the, you know, the flywheel on the…”
Granular user feature toggles can unintentionally fragment marketplace supply
“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. Those ones, they really want new cars. …”
Ignoring supplier needs leads to catastrophic churn due to lagging network decay
“Many large, you know,
Marketplaces only thinking about their demand side funnel. So they run ads, they get clicks, they turn those clicks into dollars, and they try to get enough supplies that intuitively the experience is good enough for users. And my advice…”
Peer mentoring let Lyft match Uber's footprint with a fraction of resources
“This allowed us to match most of Uber's footprint with like, you know, a 10th or a 20th of the resources that you know, I, incredible speed, I guess.”
Lyft peer driver recruiters outperformed the company's trained professional sales team
“Those guys were outperforming our very best, like, trained salespeople, because it's not like, hey, it's Ben from Lyft, like, hop on the road, please.”
Rigid French labor laws reduce product manager autonomy compared to the US
“I think in France, the market is much less liquid. So it's incredibly difficult to change jobs, and it's very expensive to fire someone in France. So it seems to lead to two effects beyond the obvious job security. One is, I think PMs tend to have less autonom…”