Bill Gurley follows up on his marketplace post with one on marketplace pricing. He used the term “rake” which is the commission or the amount skimmed off by the platform. The key, is:
If your objective is to build a winner-take-all marketplace over a very long term, you want to build a platform that has the least amount of friction (both product and pricing). High rakes are a form of friction precisely because your rake becomes part of the landed price for the consumer…
High margins also make it easy for your competitors to come in and disrupt or prevent your network effect by drawing others to competing platforms:
High volume combined with a modest rake is the perfect formula for a true organic marketplace and a sustainable competitive advantage. A sustainable platform or marketplace is one where the value of being in the network clearly outshines the transactional costs charged for being in the network. This way, suppliers will feel obliged to stay on the platform, and consumers will not see prices that are overly burdened by the network provider. Everyone wins in this scenario, but particularly the platform provider. A high rake will allow you to achieve larger revenues faster, but it will eventually represent a strategic red flag – a pricing umbrella that can be exploited by others in the ecosystem, perhaps by someone with a more disruptive business model. As Jeff Bezos is fond of saying, “your margin is my opportunity…”
Booking.com took a much more aggressive approach (perhaps because it was the only one available) . They started with a 10% “agency model,” which not only represented a lower rake, but also provided better cash flow terms to the supplier. As such, they were able to signup nearly every small hotel in Europe…
Gurley points out a nice twist, where you can get the supply side of the marketplace themselves to bid up the “rake” if they see value in doing so. This perhaps kicks in after the network has won in some sense. The archtypal example is Google Adwords. The only limitation to this, it has to be done in a way that does not turn off or cast doubt to the other side of the market, suppliers bidding for placement cannot destroy customer confidence in the recommendations that the platform is delivering. I suspect that in many markets, “pay to play” would undermine the platform itself.
It turns out that the average rake at Priceline Group is even higher today, as they allow merchants to voluntarily bid up their rake for better placement in the network (you can see this in the table above). This is one of my favorite marketplace business model “tweaks.” You start with a low rake to get broad-based supplier adoption, and you add in a market-driven pricing dynamic that allows those suppliers who want more volume or exposure to pay more on an opt-in basis. This way no one leaves the network due to excessive fees, yet you end up with a higher average rake over time due to the competitive dynamic. And when prices go up due to bidding and competition, the suppliers blame their competition not the platform (part of the genius of the Google AdWords business model). This also allows you to extract more dollars from those suppliers who desire to spend more to promote themselves (without raising the tax on those that don’t).
