Hidden opportunities of the mobile market: trading floors
I post on my blog my own translation of this note from TechCrunch, because the idea, very successfully presented in it, lies at the heart of the strategy and philosophy of our company.
The original article is here - techcrunch.com/2012/09/27/mobiles-hidden-opportunity-marketplaces
Editor's Note: Matt Cohler is the General Partner of Benchmark Capital.
He is responsible for identifying investment opportunities related to Internet companies in addition to working closely with companies across the entire portfolio of the company. You can follow him on Twitter here. twitter.com/mattcohler
Creating and managing a marketplace is a very difficult task.
Trading floors consist of two parts: supply (sellers) and demand (buyers). To build a site, it is necessary to combine both sides of the market. And in order to control this market, you need to have a better vision on both sides of the market than anyone else - in real time. In other words, you should see the point of view of both the buyer and the seller, and you should know, in real time, what buyers want to buy and what sellers want to sell (and at what price).
As I said, creating and managing a trading floor is difficult.
Fortunately, the mobile Internet makes it much, much easier. The almost universal penetration of mobile devices today makes it possible to "connect" both sides of the market much faster and cheaper than ever before, and then, in real time, control the supply of this market and the dynamics of demand.
My Benchmark partners, and I really believe in the business model of trading platforms, we were early investors in eBay, OpenTable, 1stdibs, GrubHub, Zillow, oDesk, and more recently, Uber, a service that completely changes the private transport market through the use of mobile smartphones on both sides of the market. Everything is just beginning, and we continue to search.
The best opportunities for creating new markets (or rebuilding old ones) using mobile technologies will be in markets where supply is initially limited and there is no viable (comparable in price) replacement for this kind of supply. Aggregate this supply and demand will follow. Mobile technology just makes it all a lot easier.
The original article is here - techcrunch.com/2012/09/27/mobiles-hidden-opportunity-marketplaces
Editor's Note: Matt Cohler is the General Partner of Benchmark Capital.
He is responsible for identifying investment opportunities related to Internet companies in addition to working closely with companies across the entire portfolio of the company. You can follow him on Twitter here. twitter.com/mattcohler
Creating and managing a marketplace is a very difficult task.
Trading floors consist of two parts: supply (sellers) and demand (buyers). To build a site, it is necessary to combine both sides of the market. And in order to control this market, you need to have a better vision on both sides of the market than anyone else - in real time. In other words, you should see the point of view of both the buyer and the seller, and you should know, in real time, what buyers want to buy and what sellers want to sell (and at what price).
As I said, creating and managing a trading floor is difficult.
Fortunately, the mobile Internet makes it much, much easier. The almost universal penetration of mobile devices today makes it possible to "connect" both sides of the market much faster and cheaper than ever before, and then, in real time, control the supply of this market and the dynamics of demand.
My Benchmark partners, and I really believe in the business model of trading platforms, we were early investors in eBay, OpenTable, 1stdibs, GrubHub, Zillow, oDesk, and more recently, Uber, a service that completely changes the private transport market through the use of mobile smartphones on both sides of the market. Everything is just beginning, and we continue to search.
The best opportunities for creating new markets (or rebuilding old ones) using mobile technologies will be in markets where supply is initially limited and there is no viable (comparable in price) replacement for this kind of supply. Aggregate this supply and demand will follow. Mobile technology just makes it all a lot easier.