Step Six: Onboard supply to your marketplace

Step six is about solving the chicken-and-egg problem that marketplaces face in their early days: how do you get suppliers without customers, and how do you get customers without suppliers? By onboarding supply first. You'll learn how to attract and onboard them to your platform in practice.
Chapters
00:28 Introduction to onboarding supply
01:30 Why onboard supply first
02:22 Where to find your first suppliers
03:36 Alternative supply growth methods
05:19 How to get supplier son board
08:16 How to onboard your suppliers
08:51 Conclusion
Find the full course and get a certification at www.sharetribe...
Sources
Juho Makkonen: How to build your marketplace supply. www.sharetribe...
Lenny Rachitsky: How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business - Part 2: Cracking the Chicken-and-Egg Problem 🐣 - Supply vs. Demand. www.lennysnews...
Lenny Rachitsky: How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business - Part 3: Cracking the Chicken-and-Egg Problem 🐣 - Growing Initial Supply. www.lennysnews...
Further resources
Two-sided: Transforming from a network to a marketplace - James McAulay (Encore). www.sharetribe...
Two-sided: How to always put the customer experience first - Gaurav Singhal (Drive lah). www.sharetribe...

[@InnovativeSoft]

You are a very good teaching/ presenter .

[@Sharetribe]

Thank you so much!
All the best,
Katri

[@sportsmags]

This video series is an amazing resource and loaded with great information. Thank you for putting it together!

[@jeroenmenting3878]

Love these video's, great inspiration! Any onboarding tips for a peer-to-peer marketplace? That seems a bit more complex

[@Sharetribe]

Hi Jeroen!
Such a good point! It can indeed be very different onboarding individuals (read: regular people) to a marketplace compared to businesses and service providers who already have an incentive to sell or rent through a marketplace. Sometimes, potential users for a peer-to-peer marketplace haven't even thought about sharing their skills or property. You might need educate people about what your marketplace is for while you're attracting them to your platform. And on peer-to-peer marketplaces, it's more likely that a user is both a supplier and a customer, which means more overlap in user onboarding.
Some strategies great for peer-to-peer marketplaces were mentioned in the video, such as joining real-world meetups and events and online communities where your target users hang out. For B2B platforms, direct sales can be the best way to get users on board, while peer-to-peer marketplaces thrive on community-building and showing genuine interest in your users outside of selling your platform. For example, Gaurav Singhal and Dirk-Jan ter Horst of car-sharing marketplace Drive lah took their early suppliers for coffee or beer to learn about their needs and experiences using the platform (full story on the Two-sided: the marketplace podcast, s02e09, available on all podcast platforms, if you're interested!).
We also go into a bit more detail on onboarding supply in our Marketplace Academy article on onboarding supply (URL in the description).
Thanks for your comment!
Best,
Katri

[@booomerang-io]

We read Lenny Rachitsky's series on kickstarting a marketplace. It was a wealth of information! 🙌

[@Sharetribe]

Agreed, it's a fantastic series!