Pick the side you can make useful
Marketplaces create a chicken-and-egg problem. Renters want listings; landlords, brokers, and property managers want qualified leads. Zumper's founder, Anth Georgiades, chose supply first.
The first two years were spent building the catalog of rental apartments in San Francisco and New York. The Series A was raised on the premise that enough supply would make it possible to build tools around the renting experience later.
That choice is not a universal marketplace rule. It is a constraint decision. If a buyer arrives and sees nothing worth buying, more demand marketing can make the failure louder. If a supplier can post once and get useful distribution or workflow help, supply may have a reason to join before the buyer side is dense.
Borrow trust from the supply side
Zumper partnered with Taylor Glass-Moore, who came from a brokerage background and had relationships with landlords, brokers, and property managers.
That relationship mattered because the target suppliers had seen startups promise to disintermediate them. A founder cannot always solve that objection with a cold email or a better landing page. Sometimes the first distribution asset is a person who understands why the market is skeptical.
I would ask a marketplace founder to name the trust problem before naming the acquisition channel. Who can vouch for the product? What does the supplier fear losing? What can the first tool give them before the marketplace has enough demand to promise a full outcome?
Give suppliers a tool before asking for liquidity
Zumper's answer was a free tool called Zumper Pro. A landlord or broker could use a phone to create a listing and send it to Zillow, Trulia, HotPads, and Zumper. The tool also put applicants into one dashboard.
The supplier did not have to believe that Zumper was already the largest source of demand. The workflow had value on its own: less repeated posting and one place to manage incoming applicants.
That is the important product move. The marketplace was attached to a tool the supply side could use immediately. The tool made it easier to acquire listings and gave Zumper a chance to observe the supply workflow.
Free can be a deliberate liquidity purchase
Zumper kept the pro tool free while it acquired roughly 80% of the listings in New York City and San Francisco over two years. The platform grew to about 30,000 visitors a month before the company shifted attention toward demand.
The useful unit check is simple: if you subsidize supply, say what supply milestone the subsidy is buying and what demand evidence would let you change the plan.
I would not write “free forever” into the strategy. I would write:
| Marketplace question | Evidence to collect |
|---|---|
| Why should suppliers join now? | A useful workflow or distribution outcome before demand is dense. |
| What does liquidity mean? | A declared count of active listings, available inventory, or completed matches. |
| When does the free tool change? | A supply milestone plus a demand signal, not a feeling. |
| What trust objection remains? | The supplier's stated risk and the evidence that the tool reduces it. |
What I would keep
- Choose the side that can become useful first.
- Borrow trust from people who understand the supplier's risk.
- Give suppliers a workflow tool before asking them to believe in marketplace liquidity.
- Name the supply milestone and demand signal that end the subsidy.
The takeaway
A marketplace does not have to solve both sides at once. Choose the side that can become useful first, then make that usefulness strong enough to pull the other side in.
Sources and original research
This is an attributed adaptation of the July 4, 2020 Zumper case study. The historical supply, listing, and visitor claims come from Ali's original account; the decision table is editorial adaptation. The figures do not establish current Zumper coverage, market share, pricing, or liquidity.
Updated September 20, 2026. Based on original First 1000 reporting and the sources listed above.