How to Build Trust With Both Sides of the Marketplace When No One Knows Who You Are

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Chen: For us, it was, in the long term, we want to connect pros with people who want to hire them. But since we don't have any customers at the beginning, what can we provide a value? And so we said, what are tools that we could give away potentially for free that our pros would love to have? Chen: That craigslist tool was the one that really scaled and created enormous value for us.

Today we chat with Jonathan Swanson, cofounder of Thumbtack, Athena, and Powerset. We cover a ton of ground - starting with the Sunday idea club that led to Thumbtack, how to scale a marketplace, and how to choose ideas you'd happily spent a decade on. Next, we jump into the science of delegation - the idea at the core of Athena. Jonathan talks through how to delegate to an EA, when to start with one, a system of delegation that creates asymmetric upside and what type of founders should consider it.