[tzaman]

One of the major worries that I've had when launching our marketplace was poaching; What if clients (the demand side) decide to hire developers (the supply side) outside of our platform? Of course, we had rules against that in terms of service, but hey, circumventing those is not a big risk.

But, luckily for us, the value that we provided to both parties (and still do) outweighed the risk of losing their accounts for violating TOS, so we very rarely see that.

Regarding chicken and egg problem, we manually found and pre-screened 10 people to provide supply in advance, so when the first client came, they'd have someone to hire. Earned $13 the third day after launch. Happiest day ever :)

Today we have 19 employees and are profitable (we've hit profitability the third year, we're now 7 years "old"). https://codeable.io

[perlpimp]

"the value" -- here it is when one moves from providing value to rent extracting behaviour, one should have really big walls surrounding the market - and really unappealing alternatives.

[ttoinou]

   Of course, we had rules against that in terms of service,
   but hey, circumventing those is not a big risk

And maybe not legal nor enforceable

[theoldthrowaway]

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