Thesis

When I think about platforms consumers can take advantage of and either build their own practice on or use as a tool in their own individual way, ideas come to mind. Access to information has been a theme across the past few projects I have worked on, and comes into play again in this type of market. With Shopify, Craigslist, Etsy, Pinterest, eBay, and newer places like Hush, Fair.com, and more, consumers can search for products of services inside massive amounts of original, mostly organic data. Even if the result they receive is from a small business, that quantity and quality of information a typical consumer can access is several times larger than what they had 10 to 15 years ago.

Today, startups are taking advantage and building new applications on top of the proven web-based demand.

Regarding the market, a theme of consolidation seems to be trending at the moment, and while several factors contribute to the ability of companies to be acquiring and merging at this time, including eased regulation policies and an influx of capital with a lower tax bracket, it is still important to try and view these companies in the light of "how will this be useful in the next 5 to 10 years?" Another idea to think about is if the new idea is at least somewhat Amazon-proof, by brand, customer experience, design, or niche.

Therein lies potential issues. A platform inside this type of narrative relies upon its value proposal to consumers. Without active consumer engagement around either the brand or the hosted brands, these marketplaces are worth the desk chairs of the developers, and if there aren't desk chairs, the domain itself. As a founder of a coffee marketplace my co-founder and I are building, we see the need for quality brand presence, but also a need to present the brands we host on our site in a transparent light as well.

The thesis here simply is that Internet marketplaces that consumers can use as a foundation or service upon which to build individual projects or fulfill particular needs are important for furthering this development of access to information and essentially the democratization of market and other consumer data. The current consolidation is at the moment making a market and this market in particular is slowly growing.