Focus on the Hard Side

Pre-PMF, identify and crack the hardest side of your marketplace while hacking the other

Benjamin Lauzier
How marketplaces win: Liquidity, growth levers, quality, more

Focus on the Hard Side

"If you don't have product market fit, and if you don't have a good enough growth strategy for at least one side of your marketplace, just forget about all this marketplace stuff. Focus on this core exchange of value, go deep with one side of the marketplace and see if you can rely on some crutch, some hack for the other side for time being." - Benjamin Lauzier

What It Is

Focus on the Hard Side is a pre-product-market-fit strategy for marketplace founders. Instead of trying to solve the classic chicken-and-egg problem by growing both sides simultaneously, this framework says: identify which side is hardest to acquire, develop a reliable growth strategy for that side, and use hacks or crutches for the other side temporarily.

The insight is that most marketplace failures happen because founders get distracted by marketplace dynamics—supply/demand ratios, network effects, economic models—when they should be singularly focused on cracking one side of the growth problem.

How It Works

Identifying the Hard Side: 80-90% of the time, supply is the harder side. Signs you've found the hard side:

  • Teams intuitively know: "We can get X easily, but what we really struggle with is Y"
  • You don't have an obvious, repeatable strategy to acquire them
  • Competition is limited because others haven't cracked this either

Supply vs. Demand Examples:

Marketplace Hard Side Why
Thumbtack Demand Finding people with home projects is harder than finding contractors
Airbnb Supply Convincing homeowners to list their homes was the unlock
Lyft/Uber Supply Finding enough drivers was the constraint
Rover Demand Tons of people wanted to walk dogs for money
TaskRabbit Demand Many people wanted to be taskers

The Hack Principle: While you focus on the hard side, find a way to "jumpstart" or "hack" the easy side:

  • Thumbtack posted jobs to Craigslist to bring in supply
  • Airbnb scraped Craigslist for initial listings
  • Use a waitlist when supply is constrained
  • Manually source one side while building repeatable acquisition for the other

How to Apply It

  1. Ask your team: "Which side do we know how to get? Which side do we struggle with?" The struggle side is where you focus

  2. Develop a reliable growth strategy for the hard side - This means a repeatable, scalable method for acquiring them—not just hope or paid ads

  3. Find your crutch for the easy side:

    • Leverage existing platforms (Craigslist, job boards)
    • Manual sourcing or concierge approaches
    • Convert one side to the other (riders to drivers)
    • Subsidize or pay for early participants

  4. Validate the core value exchange - While hacking both sides, focus on whether the transaction creates real value—do people come back?

  5. Resist marketplace optimization - Don't obsess over supply/demand ratios, pricing dynamics, or marketplace economics until you have PMF

When to Use It

  • Pre-product-market-fit: This is specifically for early-stage marketplace companies
  • Launching new marketplace verticals: When expanding to new categories, apply the same logic
  • Diagnosing growth problems: If growth is stuck, ask whether you've actually cracked the hard side

Common Mistakes

  • Trying to grow both sides equally: This spreads resources too thin
  • Nerding out on marketplace dynamics: Save the economic models for post-PMF
  • Assuming you know the hard side: Actually test which side you can acquire—Rover and TaskRabbit surprised their founders
  • Never graduating from hacks: Temporary crutches should become real strategies eventually

Source

  • Guest: Benjamin Lauzier
  • Episode: "How marketplaces win: Liquidity, growth levers, quality, more"
  • Key Discussion: (00:08:05) - Why founders should focus on the hard side pre-PMF
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Related Frameworks

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