Main Takeaways: - Customer discovery - Launch and iteration - Key metrics to scale

1. How to Build a Marketplace Product
From Zero by Typeform Group PM
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6. How to build a marketplace
product from 0
By Sadaf Zahid
PM with experience from Amazon, Doji and Typeform

7. About me and PM career
About Me
- Currently a Group PM at
Typeform
- Previously at Amazon, Doji and
other companies and advise
startups
- Enjoy ambiguity
How I moved into Product
- Used MBA to learn about
product and design
- Moved roles internally into
Product Management in first
job post MBA
2

8. Advice on how to break into product with 0 experience
First leverage your strengths!
For those with:
- Engineering or Design skills, build a new
product
- Business background, leverage consulting,
marketing or sales skills
Demonstrate execution skills
Learn to address key skills gaps
3

9. Questions to Answer
- PMs and entrepreneurs looking for
advice on:
- How to start from scratch when building
a 0 to 1 marketplace product?
4

10. “How can we walk away from requirements that we
know to be true to pursue something that we think will
help?” It turns out that is exactly what product strategy
is all about—figuring out the right product is the
innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.”
Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things
5

11. 3 takeaways: Building marketplace products from 0
- Focus on the hardest customer first
- Think not just product, but building customer experience
- Execution matters for product too!
6

12. Typically when you have an idea, you are told to:
User pain
points
Build
MVP
Iterate
7

13. Marketplaces have a coldstart* problem so which
user do you focus on?
Zero Buyers
+
Uninterested Sellers
-> Create a small network
Coldstart problem: Andrew Chen
8

14. Solve a problem for the hardest user first
- Why?
- Somebody has probably already solved a problem for the easier side
- Users with an unsolved problem can create lots of value for you
- Helps you create a small network
- How to convince them?
- Financial incentive - 0 fees for sellers - Vinted
- Set up a tool to create network effects
- Clear value proposition - product delivers promise and execution
9

15. Clear value proposition
- Sub-segment side of the marketplace that is tough to attract
- Research these customers
- Product needs to deliver strapline promise
- Fairer prices and zero hassle
- Built in mechanisms to support value proposition
- Built systems of buyers and sellers to talk to each other e.g.
Amazon reviews is a great example
10

16. Product and business to drive
customer experience
- Execute on customer experience
- Details matter - e.g. Bloom and Wild
- Narrow down category of products
- Friction to protect customer experience
11

17. Product execution: Ensuring that we were
discovering the right things
- Discovery
- Virtual opportunity maps of customer issues
- Standardised communication from research to inform company
- Ran smoke screen tests before building
12

18. Stage gate process for faster execution
13
Idea and Discovery
Interview
customers or run
smoke screen tests
or collaborate with
customers in
co-discovery
Feature Definition
Enter roadmap
commitment Define
features with MVP
Design
Run UX tests for
major features
Launch and Iterate
- Launched
features
every 2
weeks and
learnt from
customers

19. Product Execution: Launch and Focus
- What to build immediately Process
- Longer term commitments were more like discovery roadmaps
- Certainty of what to build for 1 month
- Prioritization
- Launched basic features first
- Iterated to target key problems for sellers
- Focused on early successes and improvements after we identified key
differentiators
14

20. Product execution: Goal Setting
- Goal setting of squads and metrics
- Initially aligned squads to 2 key North star metrics
- Priorities shifted to growing buyers and sellers and aligning squads accordingly
- Balancing roadmap
- Within each squad, key recurring prioritisation questions on:
- Improving customer experience
- Increasing top line growth and network effects
- Building mechanisms for buyers and sellers to communicate
- Alignment across squads
15

21. 3 takeaways: Building marketplace products from 0
- Focus on the hardest customer first
- Think not just product, but building customer experience
- Execution matters for product too!
16

22. THANK YOU
17

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