Find out which side of the marketplace actually wants it.
Two-sided marketplaces fail quietly when one side never shows up. We interview both sides, benchmark who's already there, and tell you whether to build, wait or stop before the platform gets funded.
Three situations that keep coming up
A marketplace idea usually arrives with a big public market number and a lot of confidence about one side of the exchange. The other side is where it goes wrong.
The demand side hasn't been asked
The founder knows the supply side well, often because they are it. Nobody has sat down with nine potential buyers and asked what they do today instead.
Pricing is a placeholder
"We'll take a percentage" is not a price. Until someone has tested what each side will pay, the unit economics are fiction, and the pitch deck knows it.
The incumbents are invisible
There's always an existing way people solve this, even if it's a Facebook group. If the benchmarking hasn't named it, the positioning has nothing to push against.
The services that fit
For marketplaces the research order matters. Interviews first, then benchmarking to position against what exists, then feasibility on the numbers those two produce.
Product research
Interviews with both sides of the exchange before anything is built. Dwell ran nine, and two of the nine confirmed the core need, which changed the plan.
Competitor benchmarking
Who already serves each side, what they charge and where the gap is. For Squint this work set both the positioning and the price range.
Feasibility research
Market sizing with every assumption footnoted, unit economics per transaction, and a build, wait or no call in writing.
Dwell: a marketplace for newcomers to Canada
A marketplace concept aimed at the 1.2M newcomers who arrive in Canada, the public market figure used in the sizing. Nine customer interviews were run before a line of code. Two of nine confirmed the core need, which changed the plan, and pricing was flagged as unresolved rather than guessed.
Read the Dwell case study →Squint: an audit-to-pitch tool priced from benchmarking
Squint turns an audit into a pitch in under two minutes. Competitor benchmarking was central to positioning and pricing, and willingness to pay was tested at $79 to $249 per month before the price was set.
Read the Squint case study →Marketplaces, before you book
How many interviews does a marketplace sprint need?
Dwell ran nine and that was enough to change the plan: two of nine confirmed the core need, which told us the original framing was off. A two-week sprint covers that number across both sides of the exchange.
Can you test pricing before we build?
Yes. For Squint, willingness to pay was tested at $79 to $249 a month and the benchmarking set the positioning. For Dwell, the honest finding was that pricing was unresolved, and the case study says so.
We already have a market size. Do we need sizing again?
Usually the number is a top-down figure like the 1.2M newcomers used for Dwell. Feasibility research footnotes it and works down to the segment you can reach in year one, which is the number a bank or investor will ask about.
What if the research says no?
Then you've spent two weeks instead of a year. The recommendation is written as build, wait or no with the reasons, and the wait option usually comes with what would have to change.
Work in the other verticals
Marketplace work overlaps with the local businesses that sell through them and the hardware concepts that sometimes sit inside them.
Bring the idea and the market number you've been using. We'll tell you which side to interview first and what a sprint would cover.