Gigantic platform business models

Lesson Details:

Video Transcription – In this video let's talk about creating platform businesses you might ask me what the heck is the platform business well actually it's an awesome very very very common type of startup and it's basically where you bring two different groups together I'll give you an example uber drivers and riders   teachers and students Airbnb people who are traveling and people who have places to stay delivery businesses people who order food people who deliver food etc etc etc tutoring businesses freelancer businesses there's almost no shortage of them and they're amazing investors also love them because they're typically represent you know you're kind of redefining a gigantic market and so they're usually multi-million they're billion-dollar opportunities it's just a matter of uncovering them and it's a very technically intensive business of course you need transactions and you know you need databases and you need scalability and all that stuff so it's very good for people with technical background so it fits your background as a founder now usually the marketing is twice as hard that's the problem with these businesses right for example let's say uber you have drivers but let's say you didn't have writers this business woo didn't work if you have writers but no drivers this business wouldn't work so very often there's a chicken and an egg problem where you have you spend time getting one side of the business on the platform but they're frustrated and because the other part of the equation is not there and they quit so by the time you get the other part of the equation the first part of the equation quit and you're back to sort of playing catch-up all over the place and it's a mess and it just doesn't work but it doesn't have to be like that because it doesn't it's not really like that because what you do is you generally not in every case but in most cases you handpick and recruit very high quality providers so you don't go gigantic Liebig for example   in the beginning they only hand-picked a few instructor were very good and then what they did is once they were able to sell the courses by the instructors they started making case studies and success studies of how well those initial instructors did and then guess what so many other instructors started working on because they were thinking oh my god this is a good financial opportunity and so it was then from then on easy to recruit instructors and then once you started having the instructors who built up great services and courses then guess what it started becoming it started to become easier to get clients for those instructors all right the students and also at some point the instructors started promoting the Uni platform itself and just it happened like that with Airbnb delivery places freelancing places that that's just usually how it is it's a you know a different process of getting it off the ground versus once it's some cruise control is you know it's a little those things become a little easier in the beginning what happens is to get your initial customers like you see you see the service with providers and you go bonkers doing search search engine optimization social media marketing etc etc anything you can to get enough buyers for those initial providers to get the initial activity going sometimes in some cases you can even focus on just limited geographical areas or not doing this in the whole world but just starting in one city and proving the point you know depending on what the business is if it's uber they went city by city if it's something else and people don't have to be in the same place then you don't have to go city by city but it's just sometimes easier like dating sites obviously they have to be in the same place but if it's freelancers they can be anywhere and it's more skills based so if fewer skills but populate that skill and once you rate and this is kind of a business that unlike many other kinds of businesses precisely because you're literally turning a whole industry on its head revolutionized revolutionizing an industry you can you're targeting a big market like I mentioned earlier and so what happens is investors love gigantic opportunities and so this kind of business once you show a little attraction you can raise money and the raising money allows you to spend more money hiring people running ads growing your business expanding through different verticals and really really really go big and that's where this becomes a multi million multi-billion dollar opportunity platform businesses amazing businesses very good for people with technical backgrounds in your case the one thing is what's the next platform business that's the next question and that answer is well what's the next thing happening for example   saw that hey education needs to be democratized uber saw okay there's an injustice in how you know like the cab companies are dominating the markets they need they wanted to do something about it what's the next thing keep an eye out what is the next thing some you know one example I like to give and I don't I'm not saying you should do it but just an example bitcoin ok bitcoin is the greatest and coolest new thing how do you connect whose are the bar that of course there's buyers and sellers and of course there's already platforms for it but is there anything else that you can get people to do with Bitcoin or cryptocurrency that maybe isn't currently done I'm not saying this is a great example but something like that because it's a new space it's a hot space and because it's new and hot the competitors aren't as established and you have an opportunity and if it's maybe maybe it's not a Bitcoin but what's next for next year four year after that that's really how you jump on new opportunities that are amazing is by not competing with yesterday's business models ok but competing on tomorrow's business models you have to have the nose for it and that's essentially how you do really well with the platform businesses.