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Matchmakers  By  cover art

Matchmakers

By: Richard Schmalensee,David S. Evans
Narrated by: John McLain
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Publisher's summary

Many of the most dynamic public companies, from Alibaba to Facebook to Visa, and the most valuable start-ups, such as Airbnb and Uber, are matchmakers that connect one group of customers with another group of customers. Economists call matchmakers multisided platforms because they provide physical or virtual platforms for multiple groups to get together. Dating sites connect people with potential matches, for example, and ride-sharing apps do the same for drivers and riders. Although matchmakers have been around for millennia, they're becoming more and more popular - and profitable - due to dramatic advances in technology, and a lot of companies that have managed to crack the code of this business model have become today's power brokers.

Don't let the flashy successes fool you, though. Starting a matchmaker is one of the toughest business challenges, and almost everyone who tries to build one, fails.

In Matchmakers, David Evans and Richard Schmalensee, two economists who were among the first to analyze multisided platforms and discover their principles, and who've consulted for some of the most successful platform businesses in the world, explain how matchmakers work best in practice, why they do what they do, and how entrepreneurs can improve their chances for success.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, an investor, a consumer, or an executive, your future will involve more and more multisided platforms, and Matchmakers - rich with stories from platform winners and losers - is the one book you'll need in order to navigate this appealing but confusing world.

Cover design by Stephani Finks.

©2016 David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about Matchmakers

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Repetition of one business all the time !

I am very disappointed with this book & took the time to warn anyone from buying it because of one very obvious\clear REASON.
The authors KEPT mentioning one business in every single chapter which is OpenTable.com.
They repeated this case study as if it’s the only matchmaker business ever existed. The book cover & sample is not as they promise. Hope the Audible Admin double check this book & refund me.

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3 people found this helpful

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Compelling version of the platform revolution

If you're going to spend your money, send it on the platform revolution -

a much more thorough undertaking.

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3 people found this helpful

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Great complement to Platform Revolution

I found Matchmakers to be a great compliment to Platform Revolution -- raising a number of distinct concepts and analogies that I found insightful and useful.

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2 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Captain Obvious speaks through the book

The book contains basic information on platform business. Same messages are repeated again and again.

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1 person found this helpful

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good but there is better

this is a very good book. a must read. but there are even better books on the topic.

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Great book. Not so good narrator

The book is great and relevant even after a couple of years have passed since being published. The narrator, on the other hand, has an annoying way of reading the text

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Platforms of the future

Another great book on multisided platforms, lots of context and case histories.
I really enjoyed reading it, I strongly endorse it.

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Not bad

Perhaps a little too much repetitive jargon and the narrator, while professional, was a little too much like a 60s radio announcer and while he was clearly not the author/expert, his tone came off as condescending. Good content.not easy to listen to. Like the professorial teacher you tune out. It’s a good idea for a white paper they turned into a book.

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Suggested for any platform or community manager

This book has had a great influence on me and I have implemented many of these strategies to guide my development and admin teams. These concepts have also helped me clarify the direction of Automate America to our investors. Thank you Mr. McLain for content and producing it in audio format!

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Concise and full of examples

The examples of matchmakers range from old and new and from successes to failures to brown outs of platforms. I especially learned from the parts on Alibaba and the lack of an Alibaba equivalent in the US, Wex card, Apple pay, Mpesa and Western Union and traditional shopping malls. By the end of the book you get a feeling that these types of organizations have always been the stem upon which more traditional single sided businesses are built, yet the archetype you get of a business in popular culture is single sided.
Helpfully, the authors summarize their thinking in the form of 6 dimensions that define a platform: who are the different sides and what's in it for them, how will the platform enable interaction, how will it set prices and subsidies and how itself will profit, what standards and regulations will it enforce between sides, what external dependencies does it have on a larger ecosystem, and how will it attain critical mass.

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