hierarchy-of-marketplaces
Use when asked about "marketplace strategy", "chicken and egg problem", "liquidity", "two-sided market", "tipping a marketplace", "GMV growth", or "Sarah Tavel marketplaces". Helps founders and product leaders build defensible marketplace businesses by sequencing supply and demand. The Hierarchy of Marketplaces framework (created by Sarah Tavel / Benchmark) provides a progression from focused launch to market dominance.
What this skill does
## Domain Context This skill implements a proven product management framework. The approach combines best practices from industry leaders and is designed for practical application in day-to-day PM work. ## Input Requirements - Context about your product, feature, or problem - Relevant data, research, or constraints (recommended but optional) - Clear articulation of what you're trying to achieve # Hierarchy of Marketplaces ## What It Is The Hierarchy of Marketplaces is a framework for building defensible marketplace businesses. The core insight: **GMV is a vanity metric. Happy GMV is what matters.** Most marketplace founders race to grow GMV as fast as possible, spreading resources thin across markets and categories. This is backwards. The path to a dominant, profitable marketplace requires working through three levels in sequence: 1. **Focus** - Constrain your market to a "thimble" and achieve minimum viable happiness 2. **Tip** - Reach saturation in your focused market until it tips in your favor 3. **Dominate** - Only then expand to adjacent markets and categories The key shift: Move from asking "How do we grow GMV?" to asking "How do we make both sides of our marketplace so happy they retain?" ## When to Use It Use the Hierarchy of Marketplaces when you need to: - **Launch a new marketplace** and decide where to focus - **Diagnose why growth is stalling** despite increasing GMV - **Decide when to expand** to new markets or categories - **Evaluate marketplace health** beyond top-line metrics - **Compete against incumbents** with more resources - **Raise funding** and demonstrate real marketplace value - **Choose between depth and breadth** in your growth strategy ## When Not to Use It - You're building a product without two-sided network effects - You have unlimited capital and no competition (rare) - The market has no potential for winner-take-most dynamics - You're optimizing a mature, already-dominant marketplace ## Resources **Posts by Sarah Tavel:** - *Hierarchy of Marketplaces* series on Medium **Books:** - *Platform Revolution* by Parker, Van Alstyne, and Choudary - *The Cold Start Problem* by Andrew Chen ## Further Reading - [Hierarchy Of Marketplaces](https://www.productcompass.pm/p/hierarchy-of-marketplaces)
Related in Ads & Marketing
ads
IncludedMulti-platform paid advertising audit and optimization skill. Analyzes Google, Meta, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Microsoft, and Apple Ads. 250+ checks with scoring, parallel agents, industry templates, and AI creative generation.
banana
IncludedAI image generation Creative Director powered by Google Gemini Nano Banana models. Use this skill for ANY request involving image creation, editing, visual asset production, or creative direction. Triggers on: generate an image, create a photo, edit this picture, design a logo, make a banner, visual for my anything, and all /banana commands. Handles text-to-image, image editing, multi-turn creative sessions, batch workflows, and brand presets.
rpg-migration-analyzer
IncludedAnalyzes legacy RPG (Report Program Generator) programs from AS/400 and IBM i systems for migration to modern Java applications. Extracts business logic from RPG III/IV/ILE source code, identifies data structures (D-specs), file operations (F-specs), program dependencies (CALLB/CALLP), and converts RPG constructs to Java equivalents. Generates migration reports, complexity estimates, and Java implementation strategies with POJO classes, JPA entities, and service methods. Use when modernizing AS/400 or IBM i legacy systems, analyzing RPG source files (.rpg, .rpgle, .RPGLE), converting RPG to Java, mapping data specifications to Java classes, planning legacy system migration, or when user mentions RPG analysis, Report Program Generator, RPG III/IV/ILE, AS/400 modernization, IBM i migration, packed decimal conversion, or mainframe application rewrite.
brand-library-architect
IncludedBuild a complete brand library for a product — visual asset render pipeline, brand documentation set (BRAND, COPY, MANIFESTO, BIOS, FAQ, GLOSSARY, TONE, PRICING), open-source convention files (README, CONTRIBUTING, SECURITY, CODE_OF_CONDUCT), and a self-contained press kit. This skill should be used when the user asks to "build a brand library / brand kit / press kit / brand assets" for a product, "set up a brand library workflow," "create a positioning manifesto plus visual identity," or any combination of brand documentation + visual asset pipeline. Apply phase-by-phase or run end-to-end. Templates are product-agnostic and use {{TOKEN}} placeholders the skill prompts the user to fill.
writing-tech-post
IncludedAuthors engineering blog posts end-to-end: launch deep-dives, incident postmortems, architecture migrations, performance case studies, tutorials, AI/agent system writeups, security disclosures, and research-to-product translations. Picks the correct archetype, plans the abstraction ladder, enforces an evidence cadence (diagrams, benchmarks, profiles, traces, code, ablations), tunes voice against publisher house styles (Datadog, Vercel, GitHub, AWS, Meta, Cloudflare, Jane Street), and runs a pre-publish gate for narrative momentum and disclosure ethics. Use when drafting a new engineering post, restructuring a draft that feels flat, deciding which evidence form belongs where, validating that depth and product context are balanced, or preparing a postmortem, migration, or performance narrative for external publication. Do not use for API reference documentation, README authoring, marketing copy, release notes, generic SEO content, ghost-written executive thought leadership, or non-engineering long-form essays.
blog-google
IncludedGoogle API integration for blog performance: PageSpeed Insights, CrUX Core Web Vitals with 25-week history, Search Console performance, URL Inspection, Indexing API, GA4 organic traffic, NLP entity analysis for E-E-A-T, YouTube video search for embedding, and Google Ads Keyword Planner. Progressive feature availability based on credential tier (API key, OAuth/service account, GA4, Ads). Shares config with claude-seo at ~/.config/claude-seo/google-api.json. Use when user says "google data", "page speed", "core web vitals", "search console", "indexation", "GA4", "keyword research", "nlp entities", "blog performance", "youtube search", "google api setup".