Service marketplaces face unique difficulties due to highly heterogeneous supplier preferences
Benjamin Lauzier · How marketplaces win: Liquidity, growth levers, quality, more | Benjamin Lauzier (Lyft, Thumbtack) · Sep 29, 2024 · at 25:12
Benjamin Lauzier, former VP of Product and Growth at Thumbtack, compares service marketplaces to goods platforms when evaluating supply uniformity.
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“This is what's so tricky, by the way, about you know, services, service marketplaces like Thumbtack, because unlike eBay, where sellers, you know, they just want to sell very clear and distinct inventory. On Thumbtack, you have electricians who only want certain types of jobs, but they only want it if they're available that day, and they might take a job and cancel it because something better comes up. And so this makes for, like, a very fuzzy definition of supply, and you have various, like, you know, different set of needs. Like, one electrician wants something, the other one has a very different perception of the same unit of demand, right? And that makes it very, very difficult.”
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