Episode 10: What is a two-sided marketplace?

Welcome to the Smart Startup English Podcast!

Our goal is to help startup professionals take their English from intermediate to advanced in just 10 minutes a day. In each episode, we’ll talk about a topic related to the startup world, and we’ll learn some vocabulary that you can use to sound more natural in your day-to-day business interactions in English.

In this episode, we’re talking about a few Business English terms you need to know if you’re interested in online marketplaces.

But first, let me ask you this:

Can you think of a time when you bought something online from another person, and you did so using a platform?

Let’s say you bought something on Etsy from an artist, or you used ThemeForest.com to buy a WordPress theme from a developer.

The platform that you’re using for such transactions is called a two-sided marketplace. This type of platform connects people who offer a product or a service to people who would like to buy it.

As a user, it’s a great way to find and compare products before you make a purchase. But if you’re a startup founder, a two-sided marketplace is one of the hardest business models to get off the ground. To get something off the ground means to start something, to get it running, to get it working.

In this lesson, we’ll teach you 9 Business English terms you need to know to talk about online marketplaces.

A few words we’ll talk about are:

to seed the marketplace
to get off the ground
a subsidized participant

Here’s the episode audio.

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