Marketplaces

The a16z Marketplace 100 stacks up the largest consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies. In this, our fourth annual ranking, the data revealed some of the most interesting takeaways to date.

We’ve entered the age of generative AI. When new technology captures consumer attention so quickly, it begs the question: Is there real value here?

Temu is one of the most downloaded ecommerce apps in the US. Learn the elements of this social shopping app’s retail model and why it’s winning the moment.

A Super App is a multiuse application that can perform the functions of many programs in one. Learn about current examples of Super Apps.

From entertainment franchise games to the precision delivery of medicines, small modular reactors to loads of AI applications, here are 40+ builder-worthy pursuits for 2023.

To celebrate the LA community and the city's growth, A16Z recently hosted Time to Build Los Angeles, an event where we invited LA-based investors, founders, and operators from across a diverse range of industries to talk...

Imagine you’re running a marketplace startup — let’s call it ACo — that allows consumers to sell spare items they have around the house. You notice after a few months that only 25% of your new sellers are coming back eac...

There's been a false dichotomy in technology and management lore over the past decade, between "brain" and "brawn", digital and physical, independence and interdependence, software culture versus industrial culture… Whether you're an early startup or a Fortune 500 company, today's leaders have to think completely differently, in terms of ecosystems; and they're often in the position of having to influence but not have control. So where and when to partner, when to go it alone?

The a16z Marketplace 100 series explores the startups and trends behind largest and fastest-growing marketplace companies. See the complete ranking at a16z.com/marketplace-100

The Marketplace 100 is rooted in numbers—the data behind companies' growth and GMV. But spreadsheets ultimately convey an incomplete view of a startup’s success. The core of every company is the people building it and co...

The a16z Marketplace 100 series explores the startups and trends behind largest and fastest-growing marketplace companies. See the complete ranking at a16z.com/marketplace-100.

The a16z Marketplace 100 series explores the companies and trends behind largest and fastest-growing marketplace companies. See more at a16z.com/marketplace-100.

From gaming to edtech, marketplaces to social+, these were the most-read consumer tech posts of the year.

Gross margins are one of the most important financial metrics for any startup, but figuring out what does and doesn't go into them as a company grows is not as simple as it sounds. In this episode, we discuss why and when margins matter, and how they evolve along the way.

Today’s episode is about a practical application of crypto — namely, the way it can “tokenize” fandom. More broadly, it’s about fan engagement, and the increasingly blurred lines between sports, culture and tech.

In normal times, every company operates against some hypothetical growth model—a data-driven framework that describes how your product grows and how you acquire new users. These, of course, are not normal times. In the f...

Lots of outstanding programs and resources exist to help founders learn about building tech startups. We wanted to create a course detailing what’s different about building in crypto.

Primary care was meant to be the front door to the healthcare system: the one-stop-shop we rely on for all of our general healthcare needs, and to help us navigate the rest of the convoluted care delivery ecosystem.

A home care company and network of home care agencies that cares for elders and also puts caregivers at the center.

A hiring platform for nurses in the U.S. used by hospitals and health systems that helps hospitals find nurses faster, offers free continuing education to nurses everywhere, and puts nurses at the center.

The spike in online ordering and food delivery—a trend that's particularly relevant now—is evidence of how tech is fundamentally changing how and what we eat. In this conversation between Virtual Kitchen Co. CEO Ken Chong, Snackpass CEO Kevin Tan, a16z general parter Andrew Chen, and host Lauren Murrow, we discuss what's driving this transformation, as well as its implications for the future of dining and cooking. Is this the end of the traditional restaurant experience as we know it?

This week, we published the a16z Marketplace 100, a ranking of the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies. See the full index and analysis here, and visit a16z.com/marketpl...

This week, we published the a16z Marketplace 100, a ranking of the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies. See the full index and analysis here, and visit a16z.com/marketpl...

This week, we published the a16z Marketplace 100, a ranking of the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies. See the full index and analysis here, and visit a16z.com/marketpl...

Get ready for seamless video shopping, more audio-first experiences, software creeping into our physical world, and the rise of super apps.

This is a written version of a presentation I gave live at the a16z Summit in November 2019. You can watch a video version on YouTube.

Platforms vs. Verticals and the Next Great Unbundling

This post, part 1 of 2, explains how platforms can help influencers monetize through digital goods and ecommerce. Part 2 will focus on platform memberships sold directly to end users.

In the future, we’re all going to be shopping on video apps like TikTok. Whether you’re buying instant noodles or high-end sweaters, it has become increasingly clear that short video clips are the future of ecommerce. Th...

I sometimes think that if you could look in the safe behind Jeff Bezos’ desk, instead of the sports almanac from Back to the Future you’d find an Encyclopedia of Retail, written in maybe 1985. There would be Post-It note...

For most of us, nurses are essentially the face of the healthcare system. In this episode, we take a look at the role of that unsung hero of healthcare, the nurse, from an industry level.

Editor’s note: It’s Summit Week at a16z, so each day we’re re-sharing some of our favorite talks from the last few years. a16z Summit is an annual, invite-only event bringing together thinkers, builders, and innovators t...

One of the holy grails in the newco world is to build out a digital platform that successfully serves the needs of a broad number of adjacent verticals, and become the definitive platform in its space. We know the now-ca...

Hustlin’ Tech is a new show (part of the a16z Podcast) that introduces the technology platforms -- and mindsets -- for everybody and anybody who has the desire, the talent, and the hustle to do great things. Read more ab...

There might be no more beloved image of the American entrepreneurial spirit than that of neighborhood kids who open a sidewalk lemonade stand on a hot summer day. With a little bit of “capital” from their parents -- lemo...

Many of the most consequential projects of the internet era -- from Wikipedia to Facebook and bitcoin -- have all been predicated on network effects, where the network becomes more valuable to users as more people use it...

Some of the most successful companies and products have been predicated on the concept of network effects, where the network becomes more valuable to users as more people use it... if managed well.

We've defined network effects -- from what they are and aren't to how to measure and manage them in practice -- but network effects have still always been hotly debated: Where are they, are they real, are they enduring.....

Some of the most successful companies and products -- from the phone era to the internet era -- have all been predicated on the concept of network effects, where the network becomes more valuable to users as more people...

The goal of every new technology company is to achieve a hyper-growth state. Once you unlock that magic moment, though, how do you actually sustain that rate of growth? The best entrepreneurs start doing something today...

Continuing our series on what's next for education startups, in this a16z hallway conversation general partner Connie Chan talks with deal and research team operating partner Frank Chen about apps and services she's seen...

Everyone expects schools at all levels -- from pre-school to post-graduate universities -- to change fundamentally as software turbocharges both students and teachers, enables new business models, and brings scale to an...

The past and future of marketplace startups -- where are we? Ever since eBay popularized an internet meeting place for buyers and sellers of, well, just about everything, we’ve been waiting for 100 other at-scale marketp...

watch time: 40 minutes

The most successful companies and products of the internet era have all been predicated on the concept of network effects, where the network becomes more valuable to users as more people use it. This is as true of compan...

watch time: 23 minutes

Editor’s note: This article by now-a16z general partner Alex Rampell was originally published in 2012 in TechCrunch.

watch time: 12 minutes

Editor's Note: Boris Wertz is the founding partner of Version One and a board partner for Andreessen Horowitz. The resource below first appeared here (as both slides and handbook) and on our site July 2016, but has since...

The professional sports business is at a crossroads.

Dinner with Anna Wintour, racing with Anja Rubik

We've already talked about why bitcoin matters. But as the set of cryptocurrencies -- and networks and "tokens" enabled by the underlying blockchain -- grow (Ethereum being one of the fastest-growing ones), where do we g...

Editor's note: This article popularizing (and coining, for better or worse) the concept of online-to-offline (O2O) commerce by now-a16z general partner Alex Rampell was originally published exactly 7 years ago in TechCru...

Jeff Jordan, JD Moriarty, Sonal ChokshiThere are the things that you carefully plan — the who (the bankers); the what (the pricing); and the when. But then there are the things that you don’t plan: like a financial crisis.

Many industries wrestle with the “last mile” problem, where it’s often cost prohibitive to connect the final leg of something -- like fiber optic cable or package delivery -- beyond some central hub to individual homes a...

From hardware and hardwires to smartphones and social, technology wants to connect. It's almost a native property of technology and especially software businesses, which is why network effects matter. "It was endemic to...

One of the biggest misconceptions around network effects (which are one of the key dynamics behind many successful and highly defensible software companies) is confusing growth with engagement. So how does one tell the d...

Besides invisible messages, bigger and predictive emoji, full-screen effects, and movie/TV GIFs, Apple recently announced that stickers, too, are finally coming to its most popular app, iMessage. It’s no surprise that me...

Love the term or hate it, the concept and reality of the "sharing economy" (or "gig economy" and so on) is here to stay. And in fact, argues NYU Stern professor and researcher Arun Sundararajan, it may even reduce the in...

Whether you think of it as a distributed ledger, decentralized database, computing infrastructure, open source/ software development platform, cryptocurrency, transaction platform, or financial services marketplace, the...

In India, where many small towns do not have "organized" retail, mobile and web retail is leapfrogging over physical department stores. How do new companies connect people to products when the logistics infrastructure is still nascent?

The chili is cooking. The beer is chilling. The humiliating terms of bets are being finalized. Everyone’s geared up to watch the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers collide in Silicon Valley’s Levi’s Stadium for Super B...

1. When one app rules them all: The case of WeChat and mobile in China

We’re now coming up to nine years since the launch of the iPhone kicked off the smartphone revolution, and some of the first phases are over - Apple and Google both won, mostly, Facebook made the transition, mostly, and...

A few weeks ago, we shared some key startup metrics (16 of them, to be exact) that help investors gauge the health of a business when investing in it.

We have the privilege of meeting with thousands of entrepreneurs every year, and in the course of those discussions are presented with all kinds of numbers, measures, and metrics that illustrate the promise and health of...

Online marketplaces are undergoing a Renaissance as entrepreneurs innovate on an entirely new generation of them. But as I’ve argued before the same core principles of maintaining them apply.

We're continuing to see tremendous innovation in marketplaces. The first generation of net companies saw a few big horizontal marketplace winners like eBay and Craigslist. But entrepreneurs are continuing to create the n...

YouTube does a fantastic job of generating zillions of video views for its community. Yet it does a relatively poor job of helping their users earn money. This is likely to due to a couple of reasons. Advertisers have be...

There is no point in drawing a distinction between the future of technology and the future of mobile. They are the same. In other words, technology is now outgrowing the tech industry.

More products are being created and developed faster today than ever before. Every day new services, sites, and apps are introduced. But with this surge in products, it’s become more difficult to get noticed and connect...

1/Next generation movie theaters could be so much better, charge a premium & dominate financially (like http://t.co/SnJsIk8528)...

Can technology companies show up and disrupt television with an onslaught of new gizmos and services, or is content still the controlling factor? What will it take in terms of money, business model and time to upend the...

BY MARC ANDREESSEN

The news around shopping during the holiday season was dominated by two separate stories. One talked about how traffic to brick-and-mortar stores was well below expectations, and that these retailers were forced to disco...

It seems like there has been a veritable explosion of companies that are leveraging technology to build “people marketplaces” that provision various services. On one side of these marketplaces, consumers are afforded a...

For those of you who don’t yet know this about me, I am a basketball fanatic. Twice a week for the past 10 or so years, I’ve organized a basketball game at Stanford. At the end of the year each year, I ask the particip...

We at a16z could not possibly be more bullish on the prospects for e-commerce, and we believe growth is poised to accelerate.

I told you mahf*ckas it was more than the music.

Today, my company Ning, where I serve as chairman and cofounder, is announcing that it has agreed to merge into Glam Media. In this post, I'd like to briefly explain the whats and whys, and to thank a lot of people who...

This post originally appeared as my opening statement in my debate with my friend Steve Blank in The Economist.

This post originally appeared as my rebuttal to my friend Steve Blank's opening statement in our debate in The Economist.

Let me put you on the game