Management and Planning

This chapter covers the more general lessons about running the marketplace and is slightly more useful for the CEO than the CTO.

Decide if it's a business or a hobby

When running a business, decisions made must be in its best interest. When working on a hobby, you can do whatever you feel like on that morning.

Don't drink the Koolaid

Keep your head down and focus on the business, not on reputation building.

Building a marketplace is like training for a marathon

You need to operate at near maximum, but not quite, for very long.

Investor value of a marketplace

It comes from owning the transaction and being difficult to replace.

The tech roadmap should follow the business roadmap

It should be very flexible to changing requirements.

Bug priorities should relate to your ability to collect money

The more your ability to collect money is impacted, the higher the priority.

Focus on what if it succeeds

Do not plan prematurely plan for contingencies and split your focus.

Keep track of why decisions were made and features built

This will help you keep track of original reasoning when the feature was built and allow you to see if the circumstances have changed enough to further develop something.

You're not FAANG so don't hire like FAANG

You are not looking for the same things and you cannot offer the same things.

Take hiring seriously

You should consider it a key task and put in effort.

Don't create silos

It's better for everyone to know what's happening.

What it really means to make data-driven decisions

Gathering as much correct data as possible, constantly reviewing decisions and being able to tell signal from noise.

Mistakes to avoid when assigning ownership of metrics

Incorrectly assigning ownership of a metric hurts the business as well as the person who can't affect it properly

Get good at cohort analysis

It's one of the most useful tools and will be used for due diligence as well.

Removing things is good

Things that aren't working should be removed and not maintained further.

Be careful with customization for a particular client

It rarely pays off.

Convert, grandfather or alienate

Three approaches to handling changes that users might not be happy about.