A weekly memo on building online marketplaces - with real data from the platform underneath them.
growth
Sep 5, 2026
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3 min read
The marketplace founders who launch fastest all skip the hard part and they build the transaction layer under an audience that's already trading.
payments
Aug 29, 2026
4 min read
Hold the buyer's money until the job is done. Three ways to do it on Stripe Connect, the one I'd pick for most booking marketplaces.
Aug 18, 2026
The 30-second test that tells you whether a mobile app grows your marketplace or just burns a few thousand dollars.
operations
+1
Aug 16, 2026
Shipping on a marketplace isn't a logistics problem. It's a fourth money flow - and if you don't design it, the answer to the title is: you.
data
Aug 6, 2026
I asked ChatGPT and Claude the twelve questions my buyers actually ask, three times each, and counted every brand they named. This is day one of the scoreboard.
postmortems
Aug 2, 2026
Ten projects, one exit, five shutdowns - and the pattern I only saw afterwards.
