Marketplace Memo #5
Fay and Berry Street Both Raise $50M, Cracked and Nulled Taken Down by International Police Operation, Spencer Rascoff Joins Match Group as CEO, Kalshi Opens to Brokerages and More!
Hi, it’s Colin! Welcome to the 91 new subscribers who joined Take Rate since the last Marketplace Memo. I am excited to have you join the 2,760+ marketplace founders, operators, and investors who subscribe. Join the fun! 👇
👋 Welcome to the 5th edition of the Marketplace Memo. My goal is to share curated news, content, and stories I am seeing related to marketplaces with a splash of color from me. Please enjoy and share with others!
🎉 The big callout for the week before we get started is that I have my first paid subscriber group office hours on February 13th at 11am PT / 2pm ET. These office hours are perfect for marketplace founders to come and ask me any and all questions about marketplaces. Paid subscribers will receive an invite to this bi-weekly event. If you are interested in joining please subscribe or feel free to reach out by responding to this email.
Market Duopoly Vibes
There's a fascinating pattern in marketplace evolution that becomes impossible to unsee once you notice it - markets tend to consolidate around two major players. We see it everywhere: Uber and Lyft in rideshare, Airbnb and VRBO in home-sharing, DoorDash and Uber Eats in food delivery, Amazon and eBay in e-commerce, and Temu and Shein in ultra-fast fashion. I saw this dynamic play out firsthand at Outdoorsy, with our competitor RVshare.
It's reminiscent of how Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently developed theories of evolution at the same time from opposite sides of the globe - when an idea's time has come, it often emerges simultaneously in multiple places. These marketplaces typically evolve into "winner-takes-most" scenarios, where one player eventually captures the majority of the value and/or the diverge significantly in business models.
This pattern keeps repeating itself - this week's fundraising news shows two dietitian marketplace startups each raising $50M rounds. We saw this same pattern just last year when Ghost and Max Retail both raised significant rounds to tackle the excess inventory marketplace opportunity. Ideas and companies come in waves but why is that?
These simultaneous innovations often emerge when multiple underlying technologies or market conditions finally converge to make an idea viable. It's like a lock with multiple tumblers - when they all finally click into place, multiple founders recognize the opportunity at once, racing to build the solution that's suddenly possible. The real question that keeps me up at night isn't why these ideas emerge in pairs, but rather what determines which player ultimately becomes the category leader.
As we've seen time and again in marketplace history, small initial advantages in execution, timing, or strategy can compound dramatically over time, ultimately determining who captures the majority of the market value. And let's be honest - a little bit of luck always plays a role too, whether it's meeting the right investor at the right time or having your competitor stumble at a crucial moment. As we watch these new marketplace duos emerge and battle for dominance, it's worth studying not just who wins, but how and why they win.
The Highlight of the Week
“Spencer Rascoff Joins Match Group as CEO” - This is big news in the marketplace world and quite the marriage. Match Group owns all the big dating marketplaces: Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, and OkCupid to name a few. Spencer Rascoff is a long-time marketplace founder having founded Zillow ($20B marketcap), Hotwire (acquired by IAC/Expedia for ~$665M) and Pacaso (fractional home ownership marketplace). I am excited to see what we he can come in and build. With the return of Whitney Wolfe Herd to Bumble, things could be heating up with dating apps. Below is his note to employees of Match Group and LinkedIn annoucement.
News
"Cracked and Nulled Marketplaces Disrupted in International Cyber Operation” - International law enforcement operation takes down multiple illicit online marketplaces that affected 17M Americans. h/t
for sharing. Justice Department"Apollo Plans to Build the First Marketplace for Private Credit" - The investment firm aims to create a new trading platform for private debt markets. From what I can tell, the primary purpose is to create a liquid market for them to syndicate and trade the debt they originate as well as for investors. The prices of this asset class have typically been opaque, so a marketplace like this could bring a lot of pricing clarity and liquidity. Bloomberg (Paywall)
"Kalshi, an Online Prediction Market, Will Open Its Bets to Brokerages" - Kalshi is a prediction market that allows users to trade on the outcomes of real-world events, such as economic indicators, political outcomes, and weather, using "yes" or "no" event contracts priced based on market-estimated probabilities. Expanding to traditional finance channels is a way of professionalizing the marketplace, a common evolution for peer-to-peer marketplaces. New York Times (Paywall)
"Alibaba Unveils Upgraded AI Model, Claims It Surpasses Rival DeepSeek-V3" - The e-commerce marketplace claims its latest AI model surpasses DeepSeek capabilities. The race is on in AI now, and these foundational models will be less expensive to train and more commodity than initially thought. Wall Street Journal
"CharterUP Hits $1 Billion Platform Volume: How Our Network Powers Group Travel" - This is a massive milestone for any marketplace and is an excellent reminder that you can build big marketplaces in many places. CharterUp
"Serial Entrepreneur Heath Padgett Launches ‘RV Help’" - New marketplace connects RV owners with mobile repair services. Heath previously built and sold a SaaS-enabled market for campgrounds to Camping World. For reference, 11.2 million households in the United States own an RV. RV Business
Fundraising
Sotira raises $2M from Unusual Ventures, Night Capital, K5 Global, Ritual Capital, and others. Sotira SaaS-enabled B2B marketplace that uses AI to help companies offload and monetize their surplus inventory. Disclosure: Yonder is an investor in Sotira TechCrunch
Fay Nutrition raises $50M Series B, led by Goldman Sachs, General Catalyst, and Forerunner. - Fay is a marketplace that connects people with registered dietitians covered by insurance. Fay was valued at $500M in the funding round and, to date, has raised $75M. Fay
Berry Street raises $50M Series B, led by Northzone, Sofina, QuantumLight, and FJ Labs. Berry Street is a marketplace connecting patients and registered dietitians, but it is also described as an AI business-in-a-box. Northzone
Tandem raises $6.1M Seed from Collide Capital, 1984 Venture, and Y Combinator. Tandem is a marketplace that makes it faster for companies to find office space. PR Newswire
Reservoir Raises $14M Series A from Union Square Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Variant, Archetype, 1kx, and others. - Originally an NFT marketplace and infrastructure, Reservoir is expanding to handle token trading and bridging across chains. The Block
Did I miss one? Email colin@yonder.vc with the subject line “Fundraising Announcement” to be included.
Reads
"Marketplace report – the AI and e-commerce revolution" - This is a comprehensive analysis of how artificial intelligence reshapes marketplace dynamics and e-commerce operations from the great folks at Prosus, Dealroom.co, and
. Prosus
"#05 Theme we Love - B2B Marketplaces in Industrial Recycling" - Post on why industrial recycling is an interesting space to build a marketplace from our friends
.Slides from Uber’s earnings call - X thread from Uber’s Balaji Krishnamurthy explaining their EV strategy and why the spikes of demand will be a hard problem for EV fleets. If we only want EV ridesharing, the required fleet size will be massive. Twitter/X
"Waymo vs. Uber" - A companion piece to the Uber thread above from
noting, among other things, the same demand and supply dynamics."DoorDash's Harshit Agarwal Talks Unified Search & Discovery" - Written interview of DoorDash's Harshit Agarwal with
about the evolution of search on the platform as quick commerce (delivery of goods from depots instead of stores) grows."Walmart’s marketplace is littered with exclusive items from other retailers like Trader Joe’s." This is an interesting post about the growth of Walmart’s marketplace, which grew 43% in Q3 of last year. It looks like the Wild West for sellers, with third-party sellers listing products from Trader Joe’s, Costco’s Kirkland Brand, and others at a premium. Modern Retail
Seed to Series A Graduation Rate - Great cohort analysis by Peter Walker of Carta. The big takeaway is that up until 2022, 30-35% of startups raised a Series A after two years. Post 2022, it is ~17% and doesn’t appear to be catching up. Anyone raising a Seed since 2022 must know that the bar for raising a Series A is much higher now and that your Seed money needs to last much longer. LinkedIn
Years from $1M to $100M ARR - Box CEO Aaron Levie shared this comparison chart of hyperscaling SaaS businesses. AI applications are changing the playbooks, and I am excited to see how this impacts marketplaces. Twitter/X
Sharetribe's Growth Journey - Sharetribe’s CEO, Juho Makkonen, reflects on the marketplace software company's growth challenges and strategic pivots. This was an older post, but Juho has shared follow-up posts to the original post. You can see links to the series of follow-up posts here: 1, 2, 3.
Watch or Listen
"Unicorn Bakery Conversation: 2025 Trends for B2B and B2C Marketplaces" - Comprehensive discussion on marketplace trends and predictions. Fabrice Grinda
"What Makes a Great Marketplace with Andrew Blachman" - Industry veteran shares insights on marketplace success factors. Sharetribe
"Scaling Skillshare as a Leading Online Learning Marketplace" - Discuss education marketplace growth strategies.
Marketplace Jobs
Software Engineer - Sotira
Lead Product Manager, Messenger AI - MindBody
Lead Product Manager - SeatGeek
Product Manager - Whatnot
Account Executive - AppSumo
Director of CRM, Product - Care.com
Product Manager - Favor
Senior Software Engineer - Venteur
Senior Product Marketing Manager - ResQ
Head of Product Design - Berry Street
Director of Finance Operations - Batch
Principal Engineer, Marketing Technology - Airbnb
Sr. Director, Consumer Insights and Experience Strategy - Hinge
Want to see your job listed here? Email colin@yonder.vc with the subject line “Job Posting” to be included or get your job featured!
Thanks for reading!
That is a wrap for the week! As always, please email me at colin@yonder.vc with any missed feedback or news. Hot tips are always welcome. Please don’t forget to subscribe and follow me on X and LinkedIn for other great marketplace content. If you want to book a call, you can find me on Intro.
🎉 The big callout for the week before we get started is that I have my first paid subscriber group office hours on February 13th at 11am PT / 2pm ET. These office hours are perfect for marketplace founders to come and ask me any and all questions about marketplaces. Paid subscribers will receive an invite to this bi-weekly event. If you are interested in joining please subscribe or feel free to reach out by responding to this email.
About Me:
Colin is a marketplace geek and the General Partner of Yonder, a pre-seed marketplace fund that invests in marketplaces that create new economies. He has also been a long-time advisor to marketplaces, helping them with product growth, monetization, liquidity optimization, and strategy. Previously, he was the CPO/CRO at Outdoorsy and worked at Tripping.com, Ancestry.com, Justanswer, and the Federal Reserve.
Great read as always - and thank you for the shout-out! I also featured the chart from Balaji as I thought it was well done and informative.