How to Spot Marketplace Opportunities for Founders

Over the past twenty years, tech entrepreneurs have created and captured enormous value by launching new marketplaces to the world.

Today NFX Partner James Currier talks with Professor Scott Duke Kominers, who has been teaching the course 'Making Markets' along with other classes at Harvard Business School. With over 80 academic papers published, he is in the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit, as well as a Faculty Affiliate of the Harvard Department of Economics, the Harvard Center of Mathematical Sciences & Applications, and a Research Economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Scott's course helps students identify and capitalize on marketplace design opportunities. James and Scott discuss attributes that determine whether and how marketplaces create value in the world as well as common causes of marketplace failure. They then present frameworks for designing marketplaces in response and discusses tactics for building trust and liquidity when launching new marketplaces.

This is the ultimate course on marketplaces.

Read the NFX essay - https://www.nfx.com/post/scott-duke-kominers/