One of our philosophies at Airdev is to “build just enough.” Your first product version should have just enough functionality to solve the customer’s core problem and nothing else. We like to call this a “Minimum Lovable Product” as it will have a limited feature set but one that users will talk about because it solves their one biggest need. 

By building a marketplace MVP this way, you will be able to launch more quickly, get key customer insights and iterate and build based on customer input and needs. For marketplaces, this may mean focusing your early build on just the buyer or seller experience and doing some early manual work behind the scenes. The key is to test your product as quickly as affordably as possible so that you can learn what is wrong and what you can make better. 

All marketplaces will need certain platform components. These will vary by the type of marketplace you are building and the specific needs of the user, and certain things will be more or less important for your audience. We’ve distilled the core items every marketplace has and outlined the important considerations to make when deciding which features to build and how to build them.