Publications

May 2016 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Airbnb, Etsy, Uber: Acquiring the First Thousand Customers

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Morgan Brown

By 2016, two-sided online platforms (or marketplaces) were pervasive among the highest growing internet startups around. These marketplaces sought to match suppliers of assets for rent, physical products or services with customers demanding them. Among the most notable... View Details

Keywords: Airbnb; Etsy; Uber; Growth Hacking; Two-sided Market; Internet and the Web; Marketing Strategy; Digital Platforms; Digital Marketing; Business Startups; Transportation Industry; Accommodations Industry

June 2019
Case

Airbnb, Etsy, Uber: Expanding from One to Many Millions of Customers

By: Thales S. Teixeira

By 2019, two-sided online platforms (or marketplaces) were among the highest-growing internet startups around. These marketplaces sought to match suppliers of assets for rent, physical products, or services with customers demanding them. Among the most notable... View Details

Keywords: Airbnb; Etsy; Uber; Growth Hacking; Two-Sided Markets; Digital Marketing; Customer Acquisition; Two-Sided Platforms; Growth Management; Marketing Strategy; Customers; Acquisition; Organizational Change and Adaptation

2013
Working Paper

Competing by Restricting Choice: The Case of Search Platforms

By: Hanna Halaburda and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

Seminal papers recommend that platforms in two-sided markets increase the number of complements available. We show that a two-sided platform can successfully compete by limiting the choice of potential matches it offers to its customers while charging higher prices... View Details

Keywords: Matching Platform; Indirect Network Effects; Limits To Network Effects; Decision Choices and Conditions; Network Effects; Two-Sided Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Competitive Strategy

SSRN

January 2018 (Revised February 2018)
Technical Note

Making Markets

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Scott Duke Kominers

Explains how to identify and capitalize on marketplace design opportunities. Defines markets and marketplaces and describes the basic functions of each. Discusses attributes (e.g., heterogeneity of participants' preferences and asymmetry in available information) that... View Details

Keywords: Marketplaces; Two-Sided Markets; Entrepreneurship; Market Design; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Market Participation; Market Transactions; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Auctions

2014
Working Paper

Price Coherence and Adverse Intermediation

By: Benjamin Edelman and Julian Wright

Suppose an intermediary provides a benefit to buyers when they purchase from sellers using the intermediary's technology. We develop a model to show that the intermediary will want to restrict sellers from charging buyers more for transactions it intermediates. We show... View Details

Keywords: Intermediaries; Platforms; Two-Sided Markets; Price Coherence; Price; Two-Sided Platforms; Distribution Channels

SSRN

June 2016 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Airbnb, Etsy, Uber: Growing from One Thousand to One Million Customers

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Morgan Brown

By 2016, two-sided online platforms (or marketplaces) were pervasive among the highest growing internet startups around. These marketplaces sought to match suppliers of assets for rent, physical products or services with customers demanding them. Among the most notable... View Details

Keywords: Airbnb; Etsy; Uber; Growth Hacking; Two Sided Markets; Digital Platforms; Marketing; Digital Marketing; Growth Management; Service Industry

2009
Working Paper

Smith and Rawls Share a Room: Stability and Medians

By: Bettina-Elisabeth Klaus and Flip Klijn

We consider one-to-one, one-sided matching (roommate) problems in which agents can either be matched as pairs or remain single. We introduce a so-called bi-choice graph for each pair of stable matchings and characterize its structure. Exploiting this structure we... View Details

Keywords: Fairness; One-Sided Platforms; Two-Sided Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods; Balance and Stability

2009
Working Paper

Consistency and Monotonicity in One-Sided Assignment Problems

By: Bettina-Elisabeth Klaus and Alexandru Nichifor

One-sided assignment problems combine important features of two well-known matching models. First, as in roommate problems, any two agents can be matched and second, as in two-sided assignment problems, the payoffs of a matching can be divided between the agents. We... View Details

Keywords: Markets

29 Jun 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Better-reply Dynamics in Deferred Acceptance Games

Keywords: by Guillaume Haeringer & Hanna Halaburda

2016
Working Paper

Refugee Resettlement

By: David Delacretaz, Scott Duke Kominers and Alexander Teytelboym

Over 100,000 refugees are permanently resettled from refugee camps to hosting countries every year. Nevertheless, refugee resettlement processes in most countries are ad hoc, accounting for neither the priorities of hosting communities nor the preferences of refugees... View Details

Keywords: Refugees; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods

2011
Working Paper

Better-reply Dynamics in Deferred Acceptance Games

In this paper we address the question of learning in a two-sided matching mechanism that utilizes the deferred acceptance algorithm. We consider a repeated matching game where at each period agents observe their match and have the opportunity to revise their strategy... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Marketplace Matching; Outcome or Result; Game Theory; Mathematical Methods; Strategy

January 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Case

HourlyNerd

By: Jill Avery and Joseph Fuller

HourlyNerd, a two-sided marketplace platform for matching freelance consultants with small companies looking for help, struggles to define a growth plan for the future. The company, started as a class project in HBS' FIELD 3 course, is assessing three growth paths:... View Details

Keywords: Startup; Lean Startup; Two Sided Markets; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Consulting Industry; United States

2020
Working Paper

To Infinity and Beyond: Scaling Economic Theories via Logical Compactness

By: Yannai A. Gonczarowski, Scott Duke Kominers and Ran I. Shorrer

Many economic-theoretic models incorporate finiteness assumptions that, while introduced for simplicity, play a real role in the analysis. Such assumptions introduce a conceptual problem, as results that rely on finiteness are often implicitly nonrobust; for example,... View Details

Keywords: Markets; Analysis; Game Theory

SSRN

25 Apr 2023
Op-Ed

How SHEIN and Temu Conquered Fast Fashion—and Forged a New Business Model

information technology to directly match consumer demand to dispersed production by a collection of factories in China. This method of reaching customers should inspire any business that provides products or services that come from many... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton; Fashion; Retail; Consumer Products

January 2024
Article

Investing with the Government: A Field Experiment in China

By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Bo Li and Ernest Liu

We study the demand for government participation in China’s venture capital and private equity market. We conduct a large-scale, non-deceptive field experiment in collaboration with the leading industry service provider, through which we survey both capital investors... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Private Equity; Business and Government Relations; Entrepreneurship; China

Find at Harvard

03 Jun 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Platforms and Limits to Network Effects

Keywords: by Hanna Halaburda & Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

June 2023
Exercise

Clash of Two Giants Simulation Exercise Instructions

By: Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti

Many markets are organized around platforms that connect consumers with complimentary applications and services. These platforms are two-sided because both sides - consumers and those providing applications or services - need access to the same platform to interact. A... View Details

Keywords: Platform Strategies; Technology Platform; Customer Acquisition; Network Effects; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Strategy