Race to the bottom, ignoring the winner-take-all scenario where you do everything for everyone, when the next group comes in at 2% + copy pastes your entire website copy and you’ve already inoculated to the end market that this solution works, which they piggy back on to get traction....can you survive more than a few qualified competitors and actually make it to cash flow break even? And why won’t this be a “many make no profit” type of market that settles with many undifferentiated sellers with close to substinance level terminal margins?

Obviously marketplaces are great, your product market fit seems strong, and you have both demographics and GMV trends behind you; but you’re in a space with passionate people who might do things for free (like people host or participate in gaming forums or discords).

Even at a few engineers you’re burning cash for quite a while, but you’re touching minors (sorry, no pun) in highly regulated markets like Europe, so you probably need a few compliance dedicated FTEs. How do you resolve disputes where it’s not QUITE the $50k skin and they sue? Or do you require arbitration at signup?

How does this work in the first 3 years until you hopefully win? VC funded burn?

It's an escrow + marketplace service. Your argument can be used against anything like eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, etc. You're assuming that the OP stagnates while copycats emerge around them, which is also a horrible assumption.

Also, "free" cannot host websites, hire workers, add features (as quickly). It's funny you mention that their service will require multiple compliance officers while you simultaneously think there's also someone who can do it for free because they're passionate.

Lastly, a skin is a skin. There's no "not quite like it" because it's a digital good, not a sandwich. I'm sure they'll use their retained lawyer when someone sues for 50k.

Overall, it sounds like you're not even against their specific product, but the idea of being a venture funded startup.

I’d flip it (rather tongue and cheek) and say that it’s you that doesn’t appreciate market places. And here’s why.

Saying eBay (your listed comp) that can sell (almost) anything, in almost every jurisdiction with probably minimal config change, at different $ values (you can buy a server on eBay), w/ both consumer and SMB sellers, and like importantly preceded this idea and implementation by a solid (guess) 15 years and along the way was the first and many technical / tricky problems for these types of models has the same business model as a vertical marketplace is kind of baffling. Let’s ignore take rate, how does your GMV scale to within two orders of magnitude at terminal compared to eBay selling skins? And how much cash did you use to get there? Is it even NPV positive to do that without knowing the cohort behavior (I’d bet the gamers are huge repeats, but they may be less loyal to Brand vs Product than say an Etsy seller; importantly you have no idea a priori). Sure gaming TAM is probably huge, but taking OPs words as written (and being kind they can or will likely pivot) the serviceable piece of the market that relates to sort of second order entertainment derivative goods is what? (I.e. if buying the game is the gating item, and is costly like some AAA titles currently are, clearly that has to somehow impact the skin market, although obviously in some cases it can be bigger). Maybe I was poor as a kid but a $70 entry price to a given market would have been debilitating to remaining disposable income. Maybe that’s changed (higher allowances or greater income variability growing those cumulative available $s for transaction).

Maybe I’m an idiot but if you put on a table 4 cards, each with the unit economics of each transaction and the cumulative economics of that “customer” as defined between your stated: eBay, poshmark, Etsy, and a business deriving value on partially the disposable income of minors in sort of fuzzy space that albeit is probably exploding.... from a distance the established ones sure look a lot better (but of course that’s survivorship bias vs a early high growth startup with unknown potential).

I’ve seen the economics of some of the booming gambling/online casino/sports betting businesses that are trendy now due in part to deregulation. Leaving aside the customer acquisition cost discussion (go check what fan fuel is spending per customer in the initial US deregulated states), and the compliance overhang will always at least somewhat drag on economics. It simply has to. This is sort of anecdotal and based on a podcast, but Coinbase has what seems to be a very large legal team; obviously not identical models but I can’t see PayPal having that many attorneys on staff. Ceteris paribus the lower complaisance overhang has to at least somewhat be a drag on margins.

Net Net, businesses are different, people are different, industries are different ...everything is different at a deep enough level. You can like some but not all marketplace businesses based on how they operate and the strategy they take and how mature/captured the underlying market is IMHO.

Thanks for your thoughts - you cover a lot of land:)

I sense a bit of apples and bananas here comparing a newly started vs super incumbents (that were once small too in markets that likely didnt make sense for everyone at the time:))

We think the skin markets deserve something similar to Coinbase for crypto -> a place where I can trade with full confidence, it's easy to use and has what I am looking for.

Again, thanks for the thorough toughts

100% not fair. Good catch! And deeper I wondered if the comparison example really broke in terms of the “sidededness” of the market or whatever the term was in the (AndersonHorowirz linked?) book on evaluating marketplaces.

If anything the “manual” feel of the minors onboarding looks so much like AirBnb, etc, you have to wonder if the company is sort of bound to succeed due to start.

Good luck on your ramp!

Is there a to email/contact you privately? I have a case study that’s very very close in big famous investor funded adjacent market that went sideways due a tiny detail; it’s public but would be more considerate to talk 1 on 1.

And what would prevent us from accepting minors as our clients or lowering our commission? Both would be possible with the push of a button and some changes in our TOS. We probably won't do either and there are reasons for that. Just trying to dismiss this point.

Interesting discussion overall...greetings from Hannes (CEO SkinBaron GmbH)

You are right, you could do that. It would mean some changes to your KYC flow, and probably also a few chats with the bank to stay compliant. Lowering comissions sure. I am not aware of your costbase but could be doable. Now that you are here, why do you charge so high fees? And what are your thougths about Netease looking towards the west?

NetEase's success will depend on their willingness to understand and adapt to EU mentality. There are many big failures of marketplaces that tried to expand to different continents, look at Rakuten's failed EU expansion for example. Also one of the reasons why we don't do an expansion to Asia or the US (yet).

So NetEase is the least of our worries for the future, macro factors and the success of CS:GO including Valve's strategic decisions with the game play a much bigger role than any competition in my opinion.

Why do we take high fees? We could obviously outsource employees and other expensive tasks to lower the cost base significantly, but it would not be needed. The margin is very good with our current cost basis already.

Raising our fees from 10 to 15 % was a decision made after OPskins and BitSkins both played themselves and went offline / took a pause. We had more inflow of users than we could handle. Now we can handle the inflow, but don't see a reduction from 15 to 10 % as the right decision to drive user growth. Of course if the market adapts as a whole and everyone takes a lower commission, we would have to do the same in the end.