Edson Arteaga

Founder @Drivanamx | Airbnb for cars
Marketplace operator raising as a non-US founder

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Take rate benchmarks, in one place:

ecommerce marketplaces 8 to 15%
ride hailing 20 to 30%
software marketplaces 10 to 20%

The spread isn't greed. It's how much of the mess the platform absorbs.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Advice I'd give myself at month zero: your first ten customers should be people whose names you can say out loud.

Not a segment. Not a persona. Ten names.

If you can't list them, you don't have a market yet. You have a hypothesis.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

https://t.co/dA1Ctnzsud

The fact that you can read it with the same tone it's hilarious 😂

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

I was the bottleneck of my own company for months and the team knew before I did.

Nobody tells you. They just route around you, and from where you sit it looks like everything is working.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Annie Duke calls it resulting: judging a decision by how it turned out instead of by what you knew when you made it.

Half of startup post-mortems are resulting. We call it learning and move on.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Undefended marketplaces leak 20 to 40% of GMV off-platform within six months.

People meet on your app and then transact on WhatsApp. That isn't a pricing problem. It's a trust problem wearing a pricing costume.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Three years in, the hardest part of this business has never been the product.

It's that two people who will never meet both have to believe the other one won't screw them.

You can ship features for that. You can't ship your way out of it.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

You don't quit an idea because it stopped working. You quit it because you stopped being curious about why it isn't.

The day you get bored of your own problem is the real signal. Everything else is noise.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

The coffee meeting is SF's unit of account. Thirty minutes, no agenda, and somehow that's how most of the capital and most of the hiring in this city actually moves.

Coming from a place where that time is a favor, it still feels strange.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Founders: what's the number you stopped reporting once you understood what it actually measured?

Mine was listings.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Every founder gets more advice than they can use, and most of it is someone describing the company they ran, not yours.

The filter I use now: did this person solve my problem, or one that rhymes with mine?

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Bill Walsh took over a 2-14 team and refused to talk about winning. He set the standard for how every single thing got done, down to how players dressed.

The score takes care of itself is the title. The standard is the actual work.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Every marketplace charges a trust tax.

It's the time, insurance, support and refunds you spend making a stranger feel safe handing over something expensive.

Most founders only find theirs after paying it for a year.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

@NWischoff I'm in for SF next dinner, how can I join?

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Nobody in SF says no. They say let's stay in touch, keep me posted, this is really interesting.

Took me a while to learn the only real signal is whether they bring someone else into the conversation.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Sending 200 cold emails to funds is not a volume strategy. It's an expensive way to burn your name in an ecosystem where everyone talks to each other.

Twenty well chosen beat two hundred. Funds show each other the bad ones.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

"Supply is the hard side" is marketplace gospel.

Three years in, I don't think the hard side is supply or demand. It's whichever side you're asking to trust a stranger with something expensive.

That side is never the one the growth plan is built around.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

"We talked to 50 users" usually means 50 people were polite to a founder.

The useful question was never do you like this. It's what are you doing today instead, and what does that cost you.

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Who are the "must-follow" founders, operators, or investors in consumer marketplaces that you think I should connect with?

Tag them below or drop their names/handles! I appreciate any recommendations or intros. 🙏
#Marketplaces #ConsumerTech #B2C #Startups #Founders #AngelInvestors #VentureCapital

[Edson Arteaga @edsonmora]

Ben Horowitz splits it into peacetime and wartime CEO. The part nobody quotes: most founders pick one and stay there.

The skill isn't being either one. It's noticing which the quarter needs before the quarter tells you.