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“White Space” For Building A Marketplace: How To Find Your Competition’s Vulnerabilities — And Capitalize | by Sarah Tavel | Medium

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One of the questions I get a lot is, “Is there any white space left to build a consumer marketplace?” I get it. Name a category or vertical and you can probably think of a company that is either a) already there, or b) seemingly in a better position than you are to capitalize. Which is why, if you define “white space” as a big, wide-open, untouched area of opportunity, it will seem as though every “space” is already taken. What so many people forget, however, is that many of our current incumbents actually disrupted the prior incumbents. Airbnb launched years after HomeAway (2005) and VRBO (1995!). GOAT was founded more than a decade after eBay. And as I wrote about previously, DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Postmates were founded a decade after GrubHub. The lesson: Just because there is an incumbent, doesn’t mean that incumbent isn’t vulnerable. Take eBay*, for example. At first glance, eBay’s wingspan is massive. The platform stretches across so many different verticals that it can seem as

Press enter or click to view image in full size Marketplaces Startup “White Space” For Building A Marketplace: How To Find Your Competition’s Vulnerabilities — And Capitalize Sarah Tavel 4 min read · Mar 12, 2020 -- 4 Listen Share One of the questions I get a lot is, “Is there any white space left to build a consumer marketplace?” I get it. Name a category or vertical and you can probably think of a company that is either a) already there, or b) seemingly in a better position than you are to capitalize. Which is why, if you define “white space” as a big, wide-open, untouched area of opportunit

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