alt Hacker NewsYou need to cheat to kickstart one side
1) Incentivize people on one side to join without the other side. For example Uber paid early drivers money just for signing up even though they had no riders.
2) You provide one side of the marketplace to kickstart the other side. This would be like Uber hiring drivers in the beginning.
This is why starting a two sided marketplace often requires significant capital. They're very hard to start organically.
Another thing I'd suggest is to focus on a niche. Don't try to solve the global problem just yet. Maybe you know a lot of people want to transport books between London and Madrid. Just focus on that to get that market healthy, then add another product or location. This helps you focus your marketing. Also if you go global to start you might have 1000 users on both sides but no matches because everyone is too spread out.
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yeah the "cheat" framing makes sense. I've been thinking about option 2, being the supply side myself at the start. Like personally coordinating the first few deliveries to prove it works before asking random travelers to sign up
option 1 is trickier when bootstrapped though. How do you incentivize signups without burning money you dont have? Curious if you've seen that work without VC funding behind it
This. Stated another way, you need to start by either: fulfilling existing demand yourself....or being the demand yourself.
Uber also paid riders to ride. I was working for Garret Camp at SumbleUpon and we got free Uber Black back then. The number of available drivers even in SF was so low that it was not really useful, even free!