A growth expert’s guide to building billion-dollar marketplaces

This week, a growth expert behind some of the biggest marketplace success stories shares his commandments for the 0-1 stage. How to Build a Billion-Dollar Marketplace — Do’s and Don’ts from the Growth Expert Behind Grubhub, Pinterest, and More In the early days, Grubhub was “embarrassingly bad” on a

This week, a growth expert behind some of the biggest marketplace success stories shares his commandments for the 0-1 stage.

How to Build a Billion-Dollar Marketplace — Do’s and Don’ts from the Growth Expert Behind Grubhub, Pinterest, and More

In the early days, Grubhub was “embarrassingly bad” on a software level, admits the company’s first marketing hire, Casey Winters.

How bad could it be? We’re talking fax machines in the 21st century. “When someone ordered food from Grubhub, we sent a fax (yes, a fax) to the restaurant with the order. On the fax was a confirmation code. Then, we sent an automated call that asked for the confirmation code. If you typed that in, we knew you were making the order,” he says.

But Grubhub got away with this hacky approach early on because, when it comes to marketplaces, the product you’re offering is your supply — not your software.

It’s a bit of a cheat code. In SaaS, teams can spend years building, prototyping, designing and layering on slick features. Marketplaces don’t need the most elegant tech in the beginning, consumers will forgive some clunky software if they’re getting connected to loads and loads of choices — whether it’s for food delivery, handmade goods, or drivers.

But stocking your fledgling marketplace with tons of high-quality suppliers is far from straightforward.

“When you’re building a marketplace, you’re tasked with generating demand and supply — so it can take longer to get the product to fully unlock. Marketplaces tend to take longer to reach product-market fit because you're effectively building for two customers at the same time,” he says.

How have companies like Uber, Etsy, Faire and Doordash navigated this cold start problem and built scalable, multi-billion dollar marketplaces? What did they do differently from the also-rans? In this exclusive interview, that’s what Winters unpacks in great detail.

He’s carved out a storied career as a marketplace growth maven. Including his 5 years at Grubhub, Winters also led the growth team at Pinterest, and served as the CPO of Eventbrite (through the trial-by-fire of the pandemic, no less). Now, he advises and angel invests in up-and-coming marketplace startups.

He demystifies the 0-1 process into a simple punch list of do’s and don’ts, with plenty of case studies to put the ideas into practice.

Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing!

-The Review Editors


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