A marketplace site that sells both sides before you launch
Two-sided marketing site with dedicated supply and demand landings, waitlist mechanics that compound, and an investor story that holds up in a pitch. From $2,000.
Who this is for
Marketplace founder before or just after launch, often pre-seed or seed, needing a site that convinces both sides of the marketplace while the product is still being built.
The pain today
- One homepage trying to sell supply and demand at once and failing both
- No waitlist mechanics — signups sit in an inbox and decay
- Investor story is buried under product features
- Social proof is thin and the site looks empty
- Mobile flow for supply signup is broken
The outcome you get
- Two-sided marketplace marketing site in three to four weeks from $2,000
- Separate supply and demand landings with tailored CTAs
- Waitlist with referral incentives to compound growth
- Investor-ready founder story and traction metrics above the fold
- Clean analytics so you know which side is growing and which is stuck
Why marketplace sites are harder than they look
A marketplace has two buyers. Supply (drivers, hosts, sellers, providers) and demand (riders, guests, buyers, clients). Each wants different proof, different language, and different next steps. A single homepage trying to do both usually does neither. The fix is a router — a home page that qualifies intent in seconds and sends each visitor to a landing built for their side. Supply wants earnings, flexibility, and control. Demand wants selection, price, and safety. Investors want TAM, unit economics, and founder. Three audiences, three landings, one cohesive narrative. Built right, this compounds from day one.
Separate landings for supply and demand
Supply landing: lead with earnings or income potential, flexibility claims, signup in under 60 seconds. Demand landing: lead with selection or convenience, price or quality proof, one-click browse or search. The homepage becomes a router — two clear entry points, a short 'how it works' explainer, trust indicators. Navigation surfaces both sides. Pricing for supply (fees, payout schedule) is transparent and easy to find. For pre-launch marketplaces, both landings route to waitlists segmented by side. Post-launch, they route to signup flows tailored to each user type.
Waitlist mechanics that compound
A waitlist is only useful if it grows itself. Three mechanics make that happen. Referral codes — each signup gets a unique code, and every signup through that code moves them up the list. Status visibility — signups can see their position, creating a small dopamine loop. Milestone unlocks — at 5 referrals, they get early access; at 20, a feature; at 100, a founder-signed note. This is not gimmicky if the product actually matters. I have seen waitlists compound to 10,000 signups pre-launch through nothing but referral mechanics embedded in the site.
Pricing and timeline
Starter $2,000 — homepage + supply + demand landings, basic waitlist. Business $5,000 — full waitlist with referrals, investor page, founder story, blog infrastructure. Corporate $10,000+ — multi-region, multi-language, advanced segmentation, investor portal. Three to four weeks start to launch. 14-day money-back guarantee. 1-year bug warranty. 100 percent code ownership under Work Made for Hire. NDA standard. If you are building the marketplace MVP in parallel, we can ship a lean marketing site in two weeks while the product comes together.
Case: GigEasy — two-sided fintech marketplace in 3 weeks
At GigEasy I shipped a Barclays and Bain Capital-backed MVP from scratch in 3 weeks. It was a two-sided gig-worker financial platform — gig workers on one side, partner employers on the other. The marketing site and product worked together to convince investors and both user types to engage. 70 percent less time than a typical 10-week cycle. Zero post-launch fires. The playbook for a marketplace site is the same: one cohesive narrative, tailored entry points per audience, a site and product that ship together so the demo feels real.
When to skip the marketing site and go straight to the product
If you are pre-seed with no product yet and no team, a lean marketing site plus a waitlist is enough — do not overbuild. If you have a working MVP, even a rough one, the product itself sells better than a marketing site ever will. In that case, spend the website budget on the product experience and keep the marketing site to a one-page explainer. Between those two extremes, a Starter or Business tier site is the right investment. I will tell you honestly in the first call which bracket you are in.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Built and shipped an investor-ready MVP from scratch
Built the entire technological base and delivered MVP in just 3 weeks, enabling a successful rapid launch and investor demo.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- How do waitlists work technically?
- A waitlist is an email capture plus optional referral tracking. I use a lightweight backend (Prisma + Postgres or a service like SendGrid Waitlist) to store signups, generate referral codes, and track position. Transactional emails fire through Resend or Postmark. Cost to run: under $50 a month at 10,000 signups. If you outgrow the simple stack, the whole schema migrates cleanly into your product database when you are ready.
- How do you handle auth for two user types?
- On the marketing site, auth is usually just a waitlist email capture — no accounts yet. When the product launches, we add auth with a user-type field captured at signup. Providers I have shipped with: Clerk, Auth0, Supabase Auth, NextAuth. Two-sided marketplaces usually want separate signup flows per side with a shared identity layer. That is Applications-scope work — the marketing site sets the stage; the product does the heavy lifting.
- Can I test messaging for both sides before launch?
- Yes, and you should. The marketing site is the cheapest place to test supply and demand messaging — waitlist signups per variant tells you what resonates. I wire variants through Vercel Edge Config or a simple server-side A/B tool. Each side's landing gets 2 to 3 variants tested over two weeks. The winning copy lands in the final site before product launch. This costs hundreds, not thousands, and saves tens of thousands in misaligned product positioning later.
- What analytics should a pre-launch marketplace run?
- Keep it lean. GA4 for top-of-funnel. Plausible or Vercel Analytics for cleaner per-page data. A dedicated event taxonomy tracking waitlist signup, referral use, and page-level engagement per audience segment. Do not install session replay tools on a marketing site — expensive, privacy-sensitive, and rarely useful pre-launch. Invest in analytics that tell you which messaging and which audience are converting. Once the product is live, the stack gets deeper, but the marketing site should stay light.
- Can you help with launch PR or investor prep?
- Not directly — I am an engineer, not a PR shop or an investment banker. What I can do: build an investor-ready site that holds up in a pitch, ship the MVP on schedule (as with GigEasy's 3-week delivery), and prepare a technical story that survives due diligence. That usually lands you in a good position with investors and press. Your VP of Marketing or a PR firm handles the outbound; I make sure the inbound infrastructure works.
Ready to start?
Tell me what you need in 60 seconds. Tailored proposal in your inbox within 6 hours.