Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, a potential client approached me with an exciting opportunity: build a two-sided marketplace platform. The budget was substantial, the technical challenge was interesting, and it would have been one of my biggest projects to date.
I said no.
Here's the thing about marketplaces - everyone gets seduced by the tech stack. "Should we build on bubble? Use no-code? What about API integrations?" But they're asking the wrong questions entirely. The real challenge isn't building the platform - it's getting people on both sides to actually use it.
After working with dozens of startups, I've learned that your acquisition strategy IS your product strategy for marketplaces. Yet founders keep approaching this backwards, building first and figuring out distribution later.
Here's what you'll learn from my experience turning down this project:
Why I recommended manual validation before any platform build
The harsh reality about two-sided marketplace acquisition that VCs won't tell you
My step-by-step framework for validating marketplace demand without code
Which acquisition channels actually work for early-stage marketplaces
The MVP development approach that saves months of wasted effort
This isn't another "growth hack" article. This is about distribution strategy reality checks that could save your startup.
Industry Reality
What every marketplace founder believes about acquisition
Walk into any startup accelerator and you'll hear the same marketplace gospel repeated like scripture. The conventional wisdom sounds logical enough:
"Build an amazing user experience and they will come." The theory goes that if you create a beautiful, frictionless platform, users will naturally flock to both sides of your marketplace. Focus on the product first, nail the core experience, then worry about acquisition later.
"Start with one side, then attract the other." Most experts recommend focusing on supply or demand first - maybe subsidize one side to attract volume, then leverage that volume to attract the other side organically.
"Leverage network effects for viral growth." The dream scenario where every new user makes the platform more valuable, creating a self-sustaining growth engine that eventually becomes unstoppable.
"Use paid ads to seed both sides simultaneously." Pour money into Facebook and Google ads targeting both suppliers and buyers, assuming you can manufacture the initial traction needed to kickstart organic growth.
Here's why this conventional approach fails 90% of the time: it treats acquisition as a post-launch concern rather than a pre-launch foundation. By the time founders realize their "if you build it, they will come" strategy isn't working, they've already burned through months of development time and tens of thousands in budget.
The real challenge isn't building a marketplace - it's orchestrating a complex dance between two different user types with completely different motivations, often in different locations, with different usage patterns. Your acquisition channels need to be as carefully architected as your platform itself.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
So this client comes to me last year with their marketplace idea. They had everything mapped out: the wireframes, the user flows, even the database schema. Their pitch was solid - connecting service providers with customers in a specific niche where both sides were underserved.
But then they said the magic words: "We want to see if our idea is worth pursuing."
That's when I knew we had a problem. They had no existing audience, no validated customer base, no proof of demand. Just an idea and enthusiasm. And they wanted to spend three months building a full platform to "test" if it would work.
I've been in this exact situation before with other clients. The pattern is always the same: entrepreneurs who fall in love with the solution before understanding the problem. They assume the hardest part is the technology, when actually the hardest part is getting the first 100 users on each side.
Here's what I told them that initially shocked them: "If you're truly testing market demand, your MVP should take one day to build - not three months."
The client looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "But we need all these features! We need user accounts, messaging, payments, reviews, search filters..." They had confused "testing demand" with "building a business."
I explained that their biggest risk wasn't technical - it was market risk. They needed to prove people on both sides actually wanted what they were offering before investing in any platform. Most marketplace failures aren't because the technology failed, they're because nobody showed up.
This conversation led to one of the most important realizations in my consulting career: your first MVP shouldn't be a product at all - it should be your marketing and sales process.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of building their marketplace platform, here's exactly what I recommended they do first:
Day 1: Create a simple landing page or Notion doc explaining the value proposition for both sides. No fancy design, no complex functionality - just clear communication about what problem you're solving and for whom.
Week 1: Start manual outreach to potential users on both sides of the marketplace. This isn't about scale, it's about understanding. Email 50 potential suppliers and 50 potential customers. Ask specific questions about their current pain points and how they currently solve the problem you're targeting.
Week 2-4: Manually match supply and demand via email or WhatsApp. Become the marketplace yourself. When someone on the demand side needs something, personally connect them with someone on the supply side. Handle all the coordination, communication, and even payment processing manually.
Month 2: Only after proving consistent demand and successful matches, consider building automation. Now you have real data about user behavior, pricing sensitivity, common objections, and what features actually matter.
The beauty of this approach is that it forces you to solve the hardest part first: acquisition and matching. If you can't manually acquire and match users, no amount of technology will save you. But if you can make it work manually, then you know exactly what to automate.
Most importantly, this approach reveals the real acquisition channels that work for your specific marketplace. Maybe your supply side responds best to LinkedIn outreach. Maybe your demand side comes from Facebook groups. Maybe both sides are already hanging out in specific online communities. You'll never discover this sitting in front of a computer building features.
I also recommended they track these specific metrics during the manual phase: cost to acquire each side, time to first match, average transaction value, repeat usage rate, and most importantly - which acquisition channels produced the highest quality users on each side.
Manual Validation
Start with email/WhatsApp matchmaking before any platform build
Channel Testing
Test 3-5 acquisition methods simultaneously during manual phase
Quality Metrics
Track user quality by channel, not just volume or cost
Asymmetric Strategy
Use completely different acquisition approaches for each side
Here's what happened when I applied this manual-first approach with other marketplace clients:
One client discovered that their supply side (freelance designers) was easily reachable through Instagram DMs, but their demand side (small business owners) required LinkedIn outreach and local networking events. This insight completely changed their acquisition strategy and saved them from building the wrong platform features.
Another client realized during the manual phase that their pricing assumptions were completely wrong. What they thought would be a $50 transaction was actually closer to $200, which fundamentally changed their unit economics and made the business viable.
The most important outcome isn't just validation - it's discovering your sustainable acquisition channels before you have a product to sell. When you're manually facilitating transactions, you're forced to figure out where both types of users actually spend their time and how to reach them cost-effectively.
This approach typically reveals 1-2 channels that work surprisingly well and 3-4 channels that are complete dead ends. That intelligence is worth more than any feature you could build.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Looking back at this decision and similar situations, here are the key lessons that every marketplace founder needs to internalize:
Distribution comes before development, always. If you can't acquire users manually, you won't be able to acquire them with a platform. The technology should automate a process that already works, not create a process from scratch.
Asymmetric acquisition is the norm, not the exception. Your supply side and demand side will likely require completely different acquisition strategies, messaging, and even value propositions. Plan for this complexity upfront.
Quality beats quantity in early marketplace validation. 10 highly engaged users on each side tell you more than 100 lukewarm signups. Focus on finding people who desperately need what you're offering.
Manual inefficiency reveals automation opportunities. The parts of your manual process that are most painful and time-consuming are exactly what your platform should automate first.
Channel-fit happens before product-market fit. You need to know where your users are and how to reach them before you can optimize what you're offering them.
Failed marketplaces usually fail on acquisition, not technology. The graveyard is full of beautifully designed platforms that nobody used, not broken platforms that users loved.
Your constraint changes as you scale. Early stage constraint: finding users. Growth stage constraint: matching quality. Scale stage constraint: operational efficiency. Build for your current constraint, not your future one.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups building marketplace features:
Test demand manually before building any two-sided functionality
Use your existing user base as one side of the marketplace
Start with simple matching via email before in-app messaging
Track which acquisition channels produce your highest LTV users
For your Ecommerce store
For Ecommerce businesses exploring marketplace models:
Leverage your existing customer base as the demand side
Test supplier acquisition through wholesale/vendor channels first
Use manual curation to ensure quality before automation
Focus on categories where you already have purchase data