Marketplaces notably face the chicken & egg or cold start problem.
Here's 10 ways you can leverage AI to solve it when starting a marketplace:
1. Use ChatGPT as a thought partner to define (and refine) your ICP, then create strategies to reach them.
2. Leverage AI agents for lead gen and outreach when building supply (via email, voice, text).
3. Deploy agents to source and onboard supply or demand, effectively "doing the work" for one side to kickstart liquidity.
4. Build an AI-powered tool or agent that solves a specific problem for supply (similar to the SaaS-first approach).
5. Create a chat-style interface to help demand-side users solve a problem and/or discover supply more efficiently.
6. Use ChatGPT or Deep Research tools to build targeted databases and/or lists for outreach or initial marketplace data seeding.
7. Use AI agents to automate complex operations or workflows needed to get one/both sides to a transaction.
8. Leverage AI to aggregate dispersed data, populating an initial database of supply, listings, or inventory.
9. Use generative AI to create initial supply or offerings, such as product content, profiles, or service examples.
10. Leverage AI tools for content creation and distribution, helping attract & engage both sides early on.
It's worth mentioning we're still very early, so it will be interesting to see how some of these strategies evolve.
I'm also curious to hear from others with ways you're leveraging AI to solve the cold start problem?