Can you imagine life today without online, consumer marketplaces? For most people, at least those living in cities and suburbs, the answer is probably…
Marketplaces
A collection of insights around the trends in consumer marketplaces.
The Magic Under the Hood: Niantic, Harry Potter and the “Real-World Platform”
There is plenty of magic in the much-anticipated Harry Potter: Wizards Unite augmented reality (AR) game, which was publicly released today by Niantic…
Amazon’s One-Two Punch: How Traditional Retailers Can Fight Back
If you think physical retail is dead, you couldn’t be more wrong. Despite the explosion in e-commerce, we’re still buying plenty of stuff in offline s…
AirBnB Acquires Last-Minute Hotel Booking App HotelTonight: A Look Back at HotelTonight’s Early Days
On March 7, 2019, Airbnb announced its agreement to acquire HotelTonight*, a hotel-booking service focused on making last-minute trips easy and fun by…
Gaming is Eating Media… and Pokemon is Just the Start
“We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing!” ― Benjamin Franklin The phrase “software eating the world” is a co…
The Hype Around a New Model for Trust—in Sneakers
“Hip hop used to be a niche music market—now it’s pop music. The same is happening with sneakers and streetwear.” – Alex Benik, Battery Ventures Partn…
The Realtors’ Last Hurrah
If you’ve ever bought or sold a home, you know the complexity and frustration—and the high fees—involved in this critical transaction. You proba…
Searching for the Next Billion-Dollar Marketplace? Look in the Shadows
Most online-marketplace entrepreneurs, investors, and executives all agree that a big market size and total addressable market (TAM for the business g…
EmBARKing on a new journey: Dog Walking and the Power of Online Marketplaces
A little less than a year ago, we published the Battery Network Effects Index, a market index including 36 current or previously publicly traded, cons…
Why This Tech CEO Keeps Hiring Humanities Majors
One Y Combinator–incubated startup founder makes the case for “STEAM” over “STEM.” The push to teach kids coding and technology now extends even to Se…