Marketplace Memo #7
Amazon Surpasses Walmart, Prosus Buys Just Eat Takeaway.com, Booking.com hits $165.6B GBV, David's Bridal to Build a Marketplace and Much More!
Hi, it’s Colin! Welcome to the 161 new subscribers who have joined Take Rate since the last Marketplace Memo. I am excited to have you join the 3,120+ marketplace founders, operators, and investors who subscribe. Join the fun! 👇
👋 Welcome to the 7th 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 Marketplace Time Forgot (And Still Can't Kill)
Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Thirty years ago, on March 1st, 1995, Craig Newmark sent a simple email to friends listing upcoming events in San Francisco. This humble beginning marked the birth of Craigslist, one of the web's first peer-to-peer marketplaces, launching in the same pivotal year as both eBay (September 3rd) and Amazon (July 16th). This convergence of marketplace innovation in 1995 highlights how technological windows often open simultaneously, with multiple entrepreneurs recognizing and acting on similar opportunities.
Craigslist revolutionized classified advertising by offering a predominantly free alternative to newspaper listings. This disruptive model devastated traditional print media, costing newspapers an estimated $5 billion in classified ad revenue between 2000 and 2007. While charging only for specific categories like job postings in major cities and housing listings in high-demand markets, Craigslist created a lean operation that generated substantial returns with minimal overhead. The business weathered significant changes in the digital landscape, seeing revenue fluctuate from nearly $1 billion in 2018 to $566 million during 2020 before stabilizing at $694 million by 2023—all while maintaining a minimal staff of about 50 employees.
The platform's minimalistic design and hands-off approach—eschewing integrated payments, shipping, user ratings, or safety mechanisms—established a libertarian marketplace philosophy that many modern platforms have abandoned. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), Craigslist maintained resilience in the face of well-funded competitors like Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, Letgo, Mercari, and Nextdoor, all of which have attempted to modernize the local commerce experience with slicker interfaces and added protections.
Craigslist remains a testament to the staying power of simplicity in marketplace design. Even as it ceded ground to specialized competitors, as of 2023, the platform continued to attract over 560 million monthly visits across 570 cities in 70 countries. This endurance demonstrates a fundamental truth in marketplace dynamics: network effects are challenging to disrupt once they are humming.
There's something nostalgic about Craigslist's wild west days—meeting a stranger in a random parking lot to buy something, scanning Missed Connections, or rolling the dice on a too-good-to-be-true apartment listing.
The Highlight
The moment when a digital upstart finally dethrones a physical retail giant happened in Q4 2024, as Amazon's quarterly revenue reached $188 billion, decisively surpassing Walmart's $181 billion. It only took thirty years!
This crossing point isn't just a statistical milestone—it represents a fundamental shift in retail power decades in the making. From Q1 2015, Walmart grew a respectable 57.2% over these nine years (4.7% CAGR), while Amazon exploded with a staggering 726.7% growth rate (24.2% CAGR). With that said, Walmart is still projected to have higher annual revenue.
This chart perfectly captures the culmination of Jeff Bezos' famous 1997 shareholder letter philosophy of prioritizing long-term market leadership over short-term profitability. This strategy transformed an online bookstore into the world's retail leader despite starting from just one-fifth of Walmart's revenue less than a decade ago. Long live e-commerce!
h/t Sebastian Vaessen and Dealroom.co for the chart. 🙏
News
"Prosus to acquire Just Eat Takeaway.com for €4.1bn" - Prosus continues to invest in/consolidate companies in the food delivery space, which is massive. Through consolidation, I expect they will continue to drive efficiency and market ownership. This LinkedIn post from Ervin Tu, the CIO, has a presentation sharing more. Prosus
Booking Holdings Reports Fourth Quarter 2024 Financial Results - Booking Holdings reported $165.6B in GMV for 2024, up 10% vs. $81.8B for Airbnb. Revenue grew 11% to $23.7 billion, while net income improved 37% to $5.9 billion. The company pointed out that alternative accommodations helped drive the growth. The company is also leaning heavily into AI internally and was one of the first partners for OpenAI’s Operator.
Grindr Announces $500 Million Buyback as It Beats on 2024 Sales - The dating marketplace is implementing a significant stock repurchase program after exceeding revenue expectations. Grindr
"David's Bridal Taps New CEO, Plans to Build Online Marketplace" - The wedding dress retailer is pivoting to a marketplace model under new leadership. CNBC
"Uber CEO Says Musk Wants to Go Alone on Tesla Robotaxi Rollout" - The battle lines have been drawn in the AV driving wars. Bloomberg
"Tesla Sets Sights on Waymo, Uber in California Ride-Hail Bid" - The first shot across the bow was fired. Tesla is moving to enter the California ride-hailing market, positioning itself as a competitor to established players. Bloomberg
“Airbnb CBO: AI Will Enable a ‘Concierge in Your Pocket’”- Airbnb’s CBO Dave Stephenson shared at a conference that AI is a top priority for Airbnb to integrate into its product. PYMNTS
Introducing LaborUp: The AI-Powered Marketplace for Construction Work - The labor marketplace for manufacturing workers officially launches. LinkedIn
AppSump Launches SumoFlow - The software deal marketplace is launching the waitlist for its new product, SumoFlow, which allows customers to purchase ready-to-use AI-powered workflows that deliver specific business outcomes with no SaaS subscription. Read the LinkedIn post from the product team. Website: SumoFlow
“FlyFlat — new favorite product for premium flights” - According to Arfur Rock (anon VC X account), the new service you can text to book flights end-to-end is doing $17M ARR, 4x YoY, profitable, raising Seed. FJ Labs is an early backer at pre-seed. X
Fundraising
Highstock raises $5.5M Seed round led by Greylock - Highstock is a marketplace for overstock inventory and is framing itself as the “Bloomberg terminal for unsold inventory”. Greylock
Cafler raises $11M Series A led by Copec WIND Ventures - The company is building a one-click solution for automotive maintenance and repair services. LinkedIn
HeyMilo raises $2.2 Million Seed led by Canaan Partners - The recruitment marketplace uses AI agents to transform the hiring process. HeyMilo
Reads
"The Next 10 Years Will Be About the AI Agent Economy" - NFX explores how AI agents interact via marketplaces and that building for that reality will be necessary. NFX
"How This Travel Company Went From Bootstrapped Startup to a $2 Billion Valuation" - GetYourGuide co-founder and CEO Johannes Reck talks about how they built the business and bootstrapped for the first four years. Inc
“Our SMB Thesis” - A very insightful post from Slow Ventures highlighting their thesis of empowering entrepreneurs and SMBs.
"Flexport Release Winter 2025" - Ryan Peterson, the CEO/Founder of Flexport, shares what they are releasing. The big product release is Flexport Intelligence, a new suite of AI tools to power your supply chain. X
"The Next Frontier of Circular Economy Innovation" - Interplay Ventures looks at what is next for the retail sector regarding inventory management and overstock. Interplay
"Measuring Market Fragmentation with HHI and C4" - SNAK Venture Partners discusses assessing market fragmentation when evaluating marketplace opportunities. SNAK VC
“Marketplace Startup Fundraising 2025” - My post from last week covering what is happening in the fundraising market for marketplace startups. I share benchmarks from Carta across Seed, Series A, and B.
Marketplace Startup Fundraising 2025
Hi, it’s Colin! Welcome to the 55 new subscribers who joined Take Rate since the last post. I am excited to have you join the 3,010+ marketplace founders, operators, and investors who subscribe. Join the fun! 👇
Watch or Listen
"Oscar Pierre, Glovo CEO & Founder: Selling 30% for €100K |The McDonald's Deal That Saved Them" - A great interview with the CEO of Glovo on 20VC, unpacking the founding story that was anything but easy. He goes deeply into the mechanics of food delivery, but two points stand out: being the first market entrant and reaching scale. To achieve this, you need speed, and a culture of speed matters.
"Redefining Hospitality: Michael Wolf's Success at Resort Pass" - Patrick McGinnis (coined FOMO) interviewed Michael Wolf about Resort Pass.
"Chris Josephs: Nancy Pelosi, Dan Crenshaw, and How They Get Rich at Your Expense"—Tucker Carlson interviews Chris Josephs of Autopilot about their politician copy-trading marketplace. They discuss the pivot from their original app and how they came to build the viral marketplace they have now.
"Betting Big on B2B Marketplaces with Sonia Nagar" - A great interview about the future of B2B marketplaces with two VCs I respect immensely.
“Insights From Launching Facebook Marketplace With Deb Liu” - Mike Willians from Everything Marketplaces talks with Deb Liu about her insights from building Facebook Marketplace and more.
Marketplace Jobs
Project & Campaign Manager - Landfolk
Head of Fleet Sales - Truck Parking Club
Manager, Product Design - Crexi
Senior Software Engineer, Backend / Full Stack - RxPost
Community Manager and Social Media - PublicSquare
Full Stack Engineer - Bubble Goods
SVP of Revenue - Ghost
Chief Compliance Officer - Autopilot
Marketing Manager - Autopilot
Sales Development Representative - Gumption
Head of Advisor Performance & Development - Fora
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.
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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.
Thanks for the call out !