Marketplaces

Two-sided platforms

A marketplace is two products that have to launch together and a trust problem underneath both. The engineering is tractable; the hard calls are about liquidity, matching and what happens when a transaction goes wrong.

What usually goes wrong

The hard parts

01Cold start — neither side shows up for an empty market
02Matching and ranking that quietly favour the wrong participants
03Disputes, refunds and moderation treated as an afterthought

What we get asked for

What we build

01Supply and demand experiences, launched as one product
02Search, matching and ranking
03Payments, escrow and payout flows
04Trust and safety tooling: reviews, moderation, dispute handling

Before you build

What has to be right

Holding funds between two parties can bring licensing obligations depending on the market and structure. Take advice on it before designing the payout flow, not after.
Plan the cold start explicitly. It is a product and commercial problem, and no amount of engineering solves it on its own.

Usually involves