 Hi, my name is Sadhu Zahe, then today I'm going to talk to you about how to build a marketplace product from zero. I'm currently a group PM at Typeform, but I worked in a number of different companies before, particularly marketplaces. I worked at Amazon's marketplace business. I worked at Doji, which is a marketplace startup that I helped build from scratch and running the product function there. I've also advised other startups on the side because I'm really passionate about the space. I moved into product because I really enjoy working with on ambiguous, tough problems. A lot of you guys are probably here because you want to understand how to move into product. The way I did it was I used my MBA to learn about product and design, and post MBA I moved into product management internally in my first job. There are a number of ways to get into product management, but if you've got zero experience, it can feel really intimidating. My advice to you guys is that a lot of people can do it. First of all, what you've got to understand is how do you leverage your unique strengths? For example, if you've got engineering or design skills, what you could do is use those skills to build a new product on the side and leverage and showcase PM skills from there. If you've got a business background, particularly in consulting marketing on sales, you can leverage, for example, structured thinking or understanding of market needs to figure out what should be built into a product and showcase those skills in interviews. Secondly, you've got to demonstrate execution skills, which are really important for product management, and I'll touch on that in my talk. Then finally, you've got to learn to address key skills gaps if you've got any. If you think about this, you've probably come up with a new idea when you're building a marketplace product, go a long road ahead and you are trying to figure out where do you even get started. What people will get out of this talk is how to build that marketplace product from zero. The talk is relevant for PMs, for entrepreneurs in working on completely new startups, those people working on new products in existing companies. I think there's some lessons to be learned about iterating on new opportunities in marketplace products as well. I think this quote from Ben Horowitz in the book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which is a great book about building companies, it really sums up the PM's job and how important it is to differentiate yourself from understanding basic requirements to building something that sets you apart and solves the user problems. How we walk away from requirements that we know to be true, to pursue something that we think will really help, it turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about, figuring out the right product is the innovator's job and not the customer's job. So there are primarily three takeaways from this talk. Takeaway number one, focus on the hardest customer first. Think not just product, but about building customer experience and a business. And execution really matters when you're building a product. So you've got the scared PM entrepreneur on the side, on the right hand side. And the reason why I think he or she is a bit scared is because this person has great ideas but for building a marketplace product, but you have zero buyers and you have uninterested sellers. So what do you do? And the answer is to address what Andrew Chen calls the coal start problem. And what he says is build a small network, a very tiny network of buyers and sellers interacting with each other in this marketplace. So how do you do that? How do you create a tiny network? And I'll talk about how in my experience I've done it. So go to solve the problem for the hardest user first. So in generally in marketplaces, you've got two sides or perhaps three, let's say you've got two sides and you're starting with buyers and sellers. Sellers tend to be the hardest side, they tend to be harder to attract. But sometimes buyers are also difficult to attract depending on the marketplace and the product that you're trying to figure out. So why should you focus on the harder side? Well, some of these probably already solve the problem for the easier side. They probably have, let's say buyers an array of products, decent shopping experience. So why should they come and do business with you? Should they come and do business with you? But the harder side particularly is important to address because if you can solve a problem for them, first of all, they will listen to you because you've got a new product. Secondly, they can create lots of value for you and drive transactions. And this can help you create a small network that Andrew Chen is talking about. So some of the ways in which you can create this network is first of all through financial incentive. So Vinted is a marketplace product that sells secondhand luxury goods. And what they did was something innovative. They basically offered zero fees for sellers. And in that process, they offered zero fees for sellers and that was great because by offering zero fees, they were able to easily compete with other players in the market that were charging fees. One of the ways in which we did it was at Doji was to set up a tool to create network effects. So we found out that it was difficult for sellers to and in some cases buyers as well to figure out how to price products. So we created a pricing tool for them and initially people just use this tool to come to our site and this generated traffic and eventually generated network effects of creating transactions. And then finally, in my experience, it's really important to have a clear value proposition. Value proposition to me aren't just draft lines. This is a product and a customer experience that delivers the promise that you are offering. So how do you have a clear value proposition? So you could start with your heart aside and what you could do is you could segment that heart aside to figure out who are the right types of people that you should attract and research these customers. So in our case, after tons of research, we figured out that our strap line was fairer prices and zero hassle. And this surprisingly also really mattered to sellers as well. The way we did it was we basically spent a lot of time understanding who are within the seller business, what were the challenges. We even had tons of different strap lines that we showcase to people and investigated them. And once we investigated them, we tried to understand what they meant to users and why they were valuable and finally came up with the right strap line. And then we also built in mechanisms to support the value proposition. So pricing tool was one mechanism. We built in other mechanisms in which we could ensure the bits about zero hassle, particularly on our logistics and delivery side. And we built in internal mechanisms that would demonstrate that our prices were always, in fact, the fairest. And then finally, we built in systems of buyers or sellers to talk to each other. The way we did it was, well, initially we did it manually and then very quickly at, as we started seeing some traction, we basically created systems of notifications where we could have, once we would have the right sellers on the side with the right products, we would inform buyers or if they were buyers on placing, expressing interest in products, we created mechanisms to inform sellers. Amazon Reviews is a great example of these mechanisms. Those reviews don't just exist for buyers, they're a way for Amazon to respond to sellers as well and let them know which products are selling, take appropriate actions on particularly bad performing products. So these mechanisms should exist at any stage of the marketplace, whether you're at zero or in fact, even at a hundred. It's really important to make sure that your trains come on time and product and business has got to deliver the promised customer experience. Details really matter. So there's a company in the UK called Gloomin' Wild and it's a flowers marketplace and they talked about when they first launched, measuring people's letter boxes to see which size of box would fit in to deliver products, flowers, sorry. And in this way, what were they doing? They were reducing return rate. They were ensuring that customers got delivered flowers and they were ensuring that sellers were not left with goods return products that were perishables. So details really matter and I think this is an important point because you've got to think not just about the UX but you've got to think about the entire customer experience, particularly in the early stages, well, really at any stage to build a viable marketplace product. Secondly, in order to build that small network where people are transacting, it's really important to narrow down on category of products. So doji is a second hand marketplace business and what we did was we started with a certain set of categories of electronics products and then we narrowed and narrowed it down till we found the right categories to sell in. And the narrow your category set, the easier it is to create that small network. Friction is also important. So initially you probably start with having zero friction when you are at stage zero to get people going but very quickly you've got to build in mechanisms to improve customer experience and you've got to have some friction. This could be, for example, in a typical marketplace product when you're dealing, let's say, with physical goods, it could be something like making sure that sellers send the products on time and building in mechanisms in your product to ensure that happens. And if it doesn't happen, taking building in mechanisms to take appropriate actions against them. Building in mechanisms for buyers. If buyers, let's say, place a bid or building in mechanisms to make sure that they make payments, honor their bids, et cetera. So these things are really important to protect their customer experience and then also therefore to protect the end value proposition that you've promised. And product has products and roadmaps. I have a huge role to play here, particularly in thinking about customer experience. Finally, the last takeaway that I have is product execution really matters. So first thing within product execution is we wanted to ensure in the company that we were discovering the right things. So we would have this virtual opportunity map of customer issues or, I guess, hypotheses, you could call them that, where we would say that we hypothesize that customers or harder customers, for example, have problems with this issue or that issue. And every week, we would pick up an issue depending on what we thought was more important and go and discover that and then we would talk to customers. So we would talk to customers. We also had, like in order to ensure that there was a constant feedback loop between what we were discovering and what the entire company was understanding, we built in a standard communication process from research to inform the company. And then finally, we also, we didn't just rely on talking to customers and running a bunch of interviews. We also wanted data in the very early stages. It was difficult to get data. So what we did, we would run smoke screen ad tests before building a product, a feature, rather. So in order to enable execution from discovery to actual product execution, we had like a stage gate process. So it'd start with, we have a hypothesis or we've seen some data that would make us have an idea, basically. And we would go and understand customer needs. Run a number of interviews or smoke screen tests and collaborate or even collaborate with customers in code discovery. There was an instance where we did that, particularly when we were trying to understand our value proposition. Then we would go back, define the feature, add it in and define the smallest version of that feature, add it in the roadmap. And then we would build it with design. And at that point, we'd run a number of UX tests, particularly for major features, to see that the way we'd build the design made sense. So it's almost like a sense check. And then finally, we'd work with development or engineering teams to launch it and iterate it. And we would do this, we'd launch features every two weeks and we would learn again from customers and we would iterate. And this is how we ran our entire execution process from discovery to delivery. So within product execution, it was really important for us to figure out what to launch and then what to focus on. So what do we build immediately? We had a process for what do we build immediately? So initially we started with basically building quarterly roadmaps and with a projection of what we were building exactly in one quarter and some idea of what we would do in the next quarter. And we realized that we were too far down the horizon and there was just far too much uncertainty, particularly in the earliest stages. So what we did was we basically made commitments for the first month and distilled that. And instead of building somewhat like six month roadmaps, we distilled it down to basically three months with complete certainty for the first month of what we were building. And the next, the other two months were basically commitments for what we would discover. And this basically helped us figure out what to build faster and helped us sort out a number of issues around, well, we committed to build X, why haven't we done it? Those types of conversations were removed. It was, they were commitments of discovery. This is what we need to discover in this order. And this made more sense. It added more clarity for engineering teams, for design teams and generally for the entire company of what should be in the roadmap. Then we also initially, you know, Ben Horowitz talked about making sure that we were solving a problem. Our first launch very much focused on launching the basics, but we very quickly, and we had some ideas about like sellers really value, for example, how to price products. So it was really important for us to launch key features that would differentiate us and do that very quickly. And then we really honed in after the first launch, honed in on number one, fixing some bugs. And then after that honed in on building, completely building differentiating features, but really focusing on them and improving them until we were happy with the results that we were getting. Prioritization, yeah, like I mentioned, we launched basic features, iterated to target, we iterated very quickly to target key problems for sellers and focused on early successes and improvements, after we identified these key differentiators. And then finally, product execution. Goal setting is really important as well. So initially we had, based on the business model of the company and what happened in Amazon as well, we had two key, we aligned squads to certain North Star metrics. And then we realized that priorities had to shift and instead of one squad focusing on one North Star metric and another squad focusing on another North Star metric, we sort of realigned our focus and we focused on buyers and then on sellers. And both squads would have a certain set of metrics to focus on, which may have been overlapping but they're focusing on different sets of users. Once we got enough sellers, coming and launching on the platform, it was really important to start focusing on buyers and then building the network. And then it was really important for us to also balance the roadmap. So within each squad, they were recurring prioritization questions. These recurring prioritization questions were how do I improve customer experience for my set group? So buyers or sellers, number one, how do I, or how do I increase stop line growth? How do I get more people through the funnel and generate network effects? So remember earlier, I talked about building in communication mechanisms between buyers and sellers. So that was an important way for us to create network effects. And it was, and then finally, the other ways of building network effects were showing pricing, for example, building on our pricing tools and launching various iterations of that. And then finally, within each squad, there would be issues of prioritization, but it was really important to align across buyer and seller squads. So making sure of things like they were focusing on the right things. If sellers were focusing on top line, if the seller side squad was focusing on top line growth, then the buyer side had features in the roadmap that could absorb that top line growth, for instance. If the buyer side was focusing on customer experience and adding friction, then the seller side was focused on taking the appropriate actions as well. So those alignments were really important across squads as well. So these are the things that really helped us with clear goal-setting as well as product execution. So finally, they're like I mentioned at the beginning of the talk, they are three takeaways from how to build marketplace products from zero. Takeaway number one, focus on the hardest customer first. In our case, it was sellers. I think not just product, but building customer experience too. So this is all about building a business, narrowing down your categories, but having a clear value proposition. And then finally, product execution is about having clear alignment among squads, squads having clear goals and metrics to focus on. There's a constant juggling of priorities within a marketplace product, within a squad as well. And you've constantly got to juggle that. Think about the entire experience as you're worrying about alignment across squads, which is really important, is an important guiding goal. And these are the things that can help you basically build a product roadmap and launch a product for a marketplace business from zero to one. Thank you.