How marketplaces win: Liquidity, growth levers, quality, and more | Benjamin Lauzier (Lyft, Thumbtack, Reforge)

I think when you're running a marketplace, you tend to sit in your ivory tower a little bit, looking at stats and thinking like if only we could get people to do X, it'd be better for for everyone, right? I I I certainly, you know, did that in my career. I think um that's missing the point that we're humans. And I think sometimes we act in ways that are non-deterministic, uh or counterintuitive. But my take is I'm a huge believer in market forces and empowerment. So provide guardrails for what a good experience is in your marketplace. Set a clear bar for quality and provide the right coaching uh and tools for supply to be successful, and then take a step back and see where the gaps are, and invest more in hands-on tactics just to close those gaps more specifically. Today my guest is Ben Lazier. Ben was VP of Product and Growth at ThumbTeC, where he rebuilt the product team and ThumbTeX growth strategy, re-architected the revenue model, and helped 3X Thumbtack's growth within three years.

Prior to Thumbtack, Ben was at Lift for over six years, where he was employee number thirty and led product and growth for the driver's side of the business, and at one point reached one percent of US workers driving for Lyft every month. He currently spend his time advising marketplace teams and founders. Teaching a Reforge course on marketplace growth. And most recently started a healthcare company called Nura that connects you to a care advocate to help you navigate the healthcare system in the US. In our conversation, we go many lay deep on the many key elements of building and scaling a marketplace business, including what to focus on pre-product market fit, how to know which side of the marketplace to prioritize, what product market fit looks like, how to track liquidity, what causes most marketplaces to fail, and how to avoid that.

And a bunch of examples of really clever growth strategies, especially on the supply side. And some really interesting stories about how Lift was able to compete with Uber early on with one tenth of the resources. As a bonus, Ben also shares insights into how the European product market is different from the US product market and what he encourages European companies to change in order to operate more effectively and be more innovative. This episode is for anyone building or thinking about building a marketplace business. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.

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