Ramesh Johari

A marketplace business never starts as a marketplace business. The biggest failure mode I see is founders thinking too much about being a marketplace before they actually are one. When you start, you don't have scaled liquidity. Stop pretending you do.

Most people think Airbnb sells rooms and Uber sells rides. Wrong. What they're actually selling is the removal of friction — the transaction cost of finding a place to stay or a driver. That's the real value proposition marketplaces offer.