Over the past few decades, marketplaces like eBay, Airbnb, Uber and Lyft, Alibaba, and Instacart, have become some of the most impactful companies in the world economy. Collectively, millions of individuals and small businesses make a living operating on these platforms, where hundreds of billions of dollars of goods and services trade hands each year. The Marketplace 100 is a ranking of the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies. One key takeaway from this is that a handful of companies dominate. The fastest growing categories exemplify why marketplaces can be so powerful for consumers and suppliers: they create new channels in markets with pent-up demand, unlocking new transaction behaviors. The fastest-growing startups reveal emergent consumer categories. Some categories are competitive and fragmented, while others have a clear winner. Scaling the mountain is much harder than one would think.  Read More >>