Mike Williams

Everything Marketplaces

Everything Marketplaces is a community & world-class network of 2,000+ marketplace founders, teams, & leaders. Members range from early stage marketplace founders, to founders & leaders from top marketplaces like Thumbtack, Turo, Hipcamp, Airbnb, Whatnot, Slice, Reibus, and more.

Everything Marketplaces is where founders go to learn, grow, and accelerate their marketplace startup. We support founders with our main platform & resources, products we've launched (Marketplace School, Co-founder match, jobs board, investor database), community, weekly events (both online & offline), and even back founders by investing in them through our early stage fund.

Founder

Marketplace Capital

An early stage venture fund backing marketplace founders & supporting them through the Everything Marketplaces community.

Founding Partner

Various Startups

I selectively advise a few early stage marketplace startups & CEO's directly (from Pre-Seed to Series A).

I'm also an active angel investor and have invested in 30+ marketplace startups (some indirect through AngelList syndicates). A few of these startup investments are Hound, Release, GarageXYZ, Farmstead, Leland, Laskie, Passport, Garten, Cabana, Publicist, ProducePay, Drive Motors, Rinse, and more.

As of 2022, I've transitioned into advising less companies directly, working with them through the Everything Marketplaces community more, & investing through our early stage venture fund.

Investor & Advisor

Thinkbox

We're a startup studio that builds, helps build, & invests in marketplace startups. We're the team behind Studiotime (acquired in 2021), have helped accelerate marketplaces to achieve $100M+ in GMV, and invested in 20+ marketplace startups. We also started the Everything Marketplaces (everythingmarketplaces.com) community, which is a community & world-class network of 1,400+ marketplace founders & leaders from top marketplaces like Thumbtack, Turo, Hipcamp, Airbnb, Whatnot, Slice, Reibus, and more.

As of 2022, we've transitioned away from the startup studio model and are focused on building the Everything Marketplaces community.

Studiotime

I started Studiotime, which is the largest online marketplace for booking music studios. Studiotime has scaled to 35+ countries and has helped thousands of artists access & book music studios.

Studiotime was successfully acquired in 2021.

Founder & CEO

The Founder Institute

The Founder Institute is the world's largest entrepreneur training and startup launch program, helping aspiring founders across the globe build enduring technology companies.

Mentored the LA program and marketplaces specifically.

Mentor

Codeity (Acquired 2015)

Codeity is a talent acquisition platform. We match developers with tech companies and make the hiring process less painful by owning the entire process from match to hire. Codeity is used by over 500 top companies for hiring such as InVision App, Teespring, and Salesforce. 

Codeity was acquired by AngelHack in 2015.

Expanxion

I built and scaled technical teams for some of the fastest growing startups in San Francisco.

Technical Recruiter

Wonderful Pistachios Professional Cycling Team

I was a cyclist for Wonderful Pistachios Professional Cycling Team and also director of social media and marketing initiatives.

Cyclist, Director of Marketing & Social Media

TheMusetteBag

Founded and started a cycling specific online e-commerce site. I perfected the art of making coffee at the office and taking long lunch breaks.

Co-Founder

Founder of Everything Marketplaces

Founder of Everything Marketplaces. I'm always working with, helping, & investing in marketplace startups. I've previously started a few marketplaces (two acquired). I also recently wrote bit.ly/marketplacesguide

You learn more about me at the following:

www.iammikewilliams.com
angel.co/yoroomie
twitter.com/yoroomie

Startup Advisor

Congratulations to the 2024 YC Top Companies!

Since 2005, YC has funded over 4,500 startups, including many that have become household names.

The companies on this year's list are collectively valued at $458B, with a combined $57.2B in total revenue generated in 2023.

Here are some more facts about the YC Top Companies this year:

🔸 13 companies (27%) on the list have had an exit, 11 are publicly traded.
🔸 Together, these companies employ over 80k people.
🔸 Over 50% are headquartered in the Bay Area.
🔸 Over 90% were founded by 2 or more co-founders.

Congrats to the founders who are making something people want!

ycombinator.com • 1 min read

Congratulations to the 2024 YC Top Companies! | Y Combinator

A founder looking to start a marketplace just asked me for advice. 

Here's 10 things I shared with them that I would go back to tell myself as a first-time marketplace founder:

1. Operate with a unique insight(s)
2. Don't skip through the ideation stage & talking to users 
3. Don't overbuild the MVP 
4. Launch as soon as you can
5. Create transactions (value) by manually matching
6. Find (or build) a distribution advantage from the beginning
7. Constrain to build liquidity
8. Liquidity is what matters 
9. Marketplaces are hard, so don't try to do it alone
10. Don't give up

Two things you’ll never forget as a marketplace founder:

1. Your first booking or transaction 
2. Your first booking or transaction that isn’t a family member or friend

I’m heading back from a quick trip to NYC and couldn’t be more energized.

I got to meet 50+ marketplace founders & teams from the Everything Marketplaces community at our meetup yesterday, which was a huge success.

It’s hard to describe the energy you get when you bring so many awesome marketplace founders together, but it's really something to experience. Seeing the community in action at our meetups and feeling this has also given me a renewed sense of purpose in building it to be something much bigger. 

A big thanks to Fabrice Grinda Jeff Weinstein FJ Labs for hosting us and all of the awesome founders that joined!

Who's building or working on a marketplace startup this weekend?

Never bet against a determined marketplace founder.

Thanks to all of the marketplace founders & teams that came out to our New York City meetup last week!

We had over 50+ marketplace founders, teams, & leaders attend, so it was a big success.

A big thanks again to the FJ Labs team for hosting us, along with Nautical Commerce for sponsoring the meetup.

Here's a few pics from the evening:

It's an exciting time in the world of marketplaces right now.

There are some incredible founders starting them, new opportunities for large marketplaces to be built, & we're starting to see some really promising marketplaces take off.

The next few years are going to be fun.

Just a reminder that marketplaces are highly nuanced. 

Not only that, but most people don’t really understand them. 

Be sure to keep this in mind when you’re seeking or receiving advice as a marketplace founder.

Thanks to all of the marketplace founders & teams that came out to our San Francisco meetup last week!

We had over 50+ marketplace founders, teams, & leaders attend, so it was a big success.

A big thanks again to the Craft Ventures team for hosting us, along with Nautical Commerce for sponsoring the meetup.

Here's a few pics from the evening:

The conversations are always fun when we're talking about marketplaces at our Everything Marketplaces meetups. 

I feel like we could have a caption contest for some of the pictures from our NYC meetup last week, so let's go for it. 

Reply below with your best marketplace captions!

Miss our group chat with Casey Winters last week?

This was a really incredible group chat with Casey where he shared some of his key learnings from Grubhub and Eventbrite, how he's now advising marketplaces like Whatnot and Bounce, we discussed lots of topics like leveraging supply to help drive demand, why frequency is important for marketplaces, B2B marketplaces, Casey shared some of the biggest mistakes that he sees marketplace founders make, and we also had a great group Q&A.

The recording is now live!

https://lnkd.in/g4iTdm9H

everythingmarketplaces.com • 2 min read

Growth Insights From Grubhub, Eventbrite, Airbnb, & Whatnot With Casey Winters | EM Group Chat #156

It seems like this was helpful and also resonated with other marketplace founders. 

What would you add to it?

Building a marketplace is about playing the long game.

Founders that realize this operate differently.

Reminder to early stage marketplace founders: 

More liquidity > more features

It's incredible to see the scale of positive impact that marketplaces can make.

Hats off once again to Joe G. Brian Chesky and the Airbnb team for not only paving the way for us all in the world of marketplaces, but also setting a great example.

It's been a busy start to the week for Marketplace Capital as we just closed on one investment (AI-enabled marketplace) & committed to another (B2B marketplace).

These are two marketplaces that I'm excited to share more about soon!

This should be a helpful reference for marketplace founders that might be on the fence about applying to Y Combinator. 

Aziz Alghunaim shares how he's not only benefited from it once, but now twice as a second-time marketplace founder building Nash.

My quick takeaway from it is to apply.

How to learn about the importance of aligned incentives:

Start a marketplace

Overheard:

"You have to be sort of crazy to start a marketplace. You have to be really crazy to start a three-sided marketplace."

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