Introduction
2022 is the third year we’re publishing the Marketplace 100, our ranking of the biggest consumer-facing marketplace startups and private firms.
When we started this series in early 2020 (based on data from 2019), we had no way of knowing how volatile the next few years would be. Many businesses were temporarily shuttered by covid, especially in categories like travel and childcare. Other categories, like online education and grocery delivery, experienced unprecedented spikes in activity. Throughout it all, the marketplace model endured.
Here are the highlights from the third edition of the Marketplace 100, which we’ll unpack in detail below:
- Unprecedented turnover shows that early stage marketplaces are as relevant as ever. Nineteen companies “graduated” (versus 10 last year), due to five IPOs, three SPACs, and 11 acquisitions. There were also 37 “freshmen,” 48% more than last year. #1 Instacart’s ascendency in a “winner takes most” category may be hard for the next generation of marketplace giants to replicate — opening up more room at the top! Live shopping app Whatnot had the biggest YoY list jump ever, moving up 73 spots into #26, and contributing to the Collectibles category’s break-out year. Ticketing, Food & Beverage, and Education saw the most new entrants, as a result of a “covid bounceback” where consumers adjusted to a new normal. Vaccine rollouts were particularly closely correlated to recovery in categories like Childcare and Ticketing. For some categories, though, quarantine created lasting habits. In particular, the Games and Shopping/Collectibles categories saw sustained growth, moving beyond previous pre-covid baselines. Bonus: while not included on the Marketplace 100 list, NFT marketplaces exploded in 2021. We looked at all-time marketplace volume for the top NFT marketplaces, with OpenSea leading at $23.5B all-time, per Dapp Radar.
Even as Instacart remains firmly in the top spot on the list, all this movement starts to point to the real marketplace story this year and in the years ahead. Where will the next Instacart, Airbnb, Uber, or Lyft emerge from? Who will join the next class of marketplace giants?
It’s still too soon to know, but four categories stood out in 2021 as worth watching: Ticketing and Experiences; Shopping and Commerce; Games; and the expanding universe of web3 marketplaces.
A note on our methodology
This year, we broadened the metric we use to gauge marketplace performance. In earlier years, the ranking relied entirely on Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), estimated from the total dollars consumers spend through each company, using Bloomberg Second Measure data.
In 2022, the rankings are determined by a marketplace activity score for each company that incorporates GMV, via Bloomberg Second Measure (for the companies Bloomberg Second Measure covers), along with Apptopia data for app performance and SimilarWeb data for website traffic. In this piece, when we assess company or category performance for 2021, we’ll use the term “marketplace activity,” reflecting our expanded metric. When it makes sense, such as when we discuss patterns from earlier lists, we’ll still refer directly and specifically to GMV. For more on methodology, please see the Methodology section below.
The Marketplace 100 List
The third Marketplace 100 edition reveals the year’s leading companies and categories, and also shows how each startup’s rank has shifted since 2021. [Download the full list]
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RankCompanyCategoryLocationYoY ChangeWebsite
1 Instacart Groceries San Francisco, CA - Instacart 2 Valve Games Bellevue, WA - Valve 3 SeatGeek Tickets New York, NY 10 SeatGeek 4 Turo Transportation San Francisco, CA 5 Turo 5 StockX Streetwear Detroit, MI 1 StockX 6 Viagogo Tickets San Francisco, CA 2 Viagogo 7 GOAT Streetwear Los Angeles, CA 1 GOAT 8 Teachers Pay Teachers Education New York, NY new Teachers Pay Teachers 9 Zola Wedding New York, NY 7 Zola 10 StyleSeat Beauty San Francisco, CA 2 StyleSeat 11 Peek Tickets San Francisco, CA new Peek 12 TCGplayer Shopping Syracuse, NY new TCGplayer 13 Goldbelly Food & Beverage New York, NY new Goldbelly 14 Evolve Travel Denver, CO new Evolve 15 Faire Wholesale San Francisco, CA 3 Faire 16 Outdoorsy Travel Austin, TX 5 Outdoorsy 17 Outschool Education San Francisco, CA 7 Outschool 18 Course Hero Education Redwood City, CA 1 Course Hero 19 RVshare Travel Akron, OH 5 RVshare 20 Epic Games Store Games Cary, NC new Epic Games Store 21 SpotHero Auto Chicago, IL - SpotHero 22 EatStreet Food & Beverage Madison, WI new EatStreet 23 Fever Tickets New York, NY new Fever 24 Gametime Tickets San Francisco, CA 20 Gametime 25 ezCater Food & Beverage Boston, MA 5 ezCater 26 Whatnot Shopping Los Angeles, CA 73 Whatnot 27 Chrono24 Shopping Carlsruhe, Germany new Chrono24 28 Get Your Guide Travel Berlin, Germany new Get Your Guide 29 Modsy Home Services San Francisco, CA 1 Modsy 30 Raise Discounts Chicago, IL 11 Raise 31 Thumbtack Home Services San Francisco, CA 2 Thumbtack 32 Eaze Cannabis San Francisco, CA 7 Eaze 33 LawnStarter Home Services Austin, TX new LawnStarter 34 TickPick Tickets Austin, TX new TickPick 35 Skillshare Education New York, NY 3 Skillshare 36 Havenly Home Services Denver, CO new Havenly 37 Tixr Tickets Los Angeles, CA new Tixr 38 Envato Professional Services Melbourne, Australia 6 Envato 39 WagWalking Pets Los Angeles, CA 2 WagWalking 40 Hipcamp Travel San Francisco, CA - Hipcamp 41 OfferUp Shopping Bellevue, WA 6 OfferUp 42 Cameo Celebrity Engagement Chicago, IL 11 Cameo 43 Fresha Beauty London, UK new Fresha 44 FineArtAmerica Art Los Angeles, CA new FineArtAmerica 45 EverWash Auto Philadelphia, PA - EverWash 46 Territory Foods Food & Beverage Arlington, VA 10 Territory Foods 47 Dice Tickets London, UK new Dice 48 Way.com Auto Fremont, CA new Way.com 49 Cookunity Food & Beverage New York, NY new Cookunity 50 Mercato Groceries San Diego, CA 16 Mercato 51 Booksy Beauty San Francisco, CA 11 Booksy 52 Peerspace Professional Services San Francisco, CA 9 Peerspace 53 Sawyer Childcare New York, NY 3 Sawyer 54 Curated Shopping San Francisco, CA 22 Curated 55 SidelineSwap Shopping Boston, MA - SidelineSwap 56 Dumpling Groceries Berkeley, CA 13 Dumpling 57 Getaround Transportation San Francisco, CA 6 Getaround 58 Toptal Professional Services San Francisco, CA 2 Toptal 59 Preply Education Brookline, MA new Preply 60 ResortPass Health & Wellness Santa Monica, CA 21 ResortPass 61 Vestiaire Collective Fashion Paris, France 7 Vestiaire Collective 62 Threadless Art Chicago, IL new Threadless 63 SonderMind Health & Wellness Denver, CO 10 SonderMind 64 Harvest Hosts Travel Vail, CO 4 Harvest Hosts 65 Lugg Home Services San Francisco, CA new Lugg 66 Curtsy Fashion San Francisco, CA 3 Curtsy 67 Snackpass Food & Beverage San Francisco, CA 3 Snackpass 68 Tophatter Shopping San Francisco, CA 26 Tophatter 69 Boatsetter Travel Fort Lauderdale, FL 18 Boatsetter 70 JustAnswer Education San Francisco, CA new JustAnswer 71 Good Dog Pets New York, NY 9 Good Dog 72 Swimply Travel Cedarhurst, NY new Swimply 73 Vagaro Beauty Dublin, CA 8 Vagaro 74 YourMechanic Auto Mountain View, CA 17 YourMechanic 75 Chowbus Food & Beverage Chicago, IL 4 Chowbus 76 Zeel Health & Wellness New York, NY 17 Zeel 77 Food Dudes Food & Beverage St. Cloud, MN 24 Food Dudes 78 Kidizen Fashion Minneapolis, MN 12 Kidizen 79 PuppySpot Pets Los Angeles, CA new PuppySpot 80 TodayTix Tickets New York, NY new TodayTix 81 Headway Health & Wellness New York, NY new Headway 82 Fooda Food & Beverage Chicago, IL new Fooda 83 Ritual Food & Beverage Toronto, Canada 31 Ritual 84 CreativeFabrica Art Amsterdam, Netherlands new CreativeFabrica 85 Gympass Health & Wellness Sao Paulo, Brazil 3 Gympass 86 AptDeco Furniture New York, NY 8 AptDeco 87 Soothe Beauty Los Angeles, CA new Soothe 88 Artlist Music Tel Aviv, Israel new Artlist 89 BabyQuip Travel Santa Fe, NM new BabyQuip 90 Via Transportation Transportation New York, NY 32 Via Transportation 91 LunchDrop Food & Beverage Austin, TX new LunchDrop 92 Discogs Music Beaverton, OR 17 Discogs 93 CoachUp Health & Wellness Newton Upper Falls, MA 9 CoachUp 94 Playbook Health & Wellness New York, NY new Playbook 95 Studypool Education Mountain View, CA new Studypool 96 Glamping Hub Travel San Francisco, CA 29 Glamping Hub 97 UrbanSitter Childcare San Francisco, CA 28 UrbanSitter 98 Vinted Shopping Vilnius, Lithuania 16 Vinted 99 Plowz and Mowz Home Services Syracuse, NY new Plowz and Mowz 100 Whats Good Food & Beverage Providence, RI new Whats Good
Freshmen and Graduates2020 to Today: Freshmen and Graduates
This year’s Marketplace 100 saw an immense amount of change. For starters, there were more companies exiting via acquisition or IPO (“graduates”) than ever before. Nineteen companies from last year’s Marketplace 100 graduated, compared to a total of 10 graduates across 2020 and 2021, an increase of 80% YoY. Eleven of the 19 were acquired, as consolidation was a big theme across categories, with many companies being acquired by other marketplaces.
This year’s list also included 37 “freshmen” entering the Marketplace 100 for the first time, compared with 25 freshmen last year. The increase in new entrants was fueled by the high graduation rate and some “drop outs.” What caused this? A mix of a covid rebound (and in certain cases, a post-covid decline), plus especially active financial markets.
This has created fresh openings for the next wave of marketplaces.
From a methodology perspective, we were also able to include companies that would have made the list in 2020, but weren’t yet covered in our various data sets. We expect every annual list will include a few companies that fall under this criteria, leading to some high-ranking debuts!
Instacart and 'winner takes all' dynamicsWhile Instacart remains at the top of the list, the next generation of marketplace giants may not follow the same “winner take most” dynamics
Over the last two years, one company has towered over the Marketplace 100: Instacart. Last year, Instacart accounted for an enormous 71.5% of the full Marketplace 100 list’s GMV, and this year it still makes up 64.2% of marketplace activity. No other Groceries company placed in the top 50, and the two others in the category that did appear generated each 0.1% (or less!) of Instacart’s marketplace activity.
Not every category works this way. Travel is a good example. In the first Marketplace 100 two years ago, the leading company, Airbnb, represented just 38% of GMV. Another strong travel player, Vacasa, also landed in the top 10, along with a mix of companies helping consumers reserve different lodging types, such as Outdoorsy, RVShare, Vacatia, and others. And this year, even though Airbnb and Vacasa are now public, growing companies, a rival — Evolve — entered the top 20.
What accounts for this difference? In some categories, the marketplace dynamic tends to be “winner takes all” — or at least “winner takes most.” This determines whether or not the category can support many billion-dollar companies, or just one or two at a time. When you have a “winner takes all” company at the top of the Marketplace 100, it’s likely to “swallow” up the revenue of much of the rest of the list!
Groceries is one category that tends to be “winner takes all.” It is harder for the supply side to support multiple tenants, since suppliers can generally sell their products in only a few places at once. There is friction in onboarding a grocery store’s thousands of inventory items, continually updating them, and fulfilling orders from a store.
And although pricing may vary a bit across marketplaces, there is a fixed (and fairly small) set of grocery stores to onboard that account for most dollars spent. Supply is relatively concentrated — partnering with a handful of large grocers provides the overwhelming majority of what the average consumer wants.
What are some other examples of potential “winner takes most” categories — and therefore, categories that could produce another Instacart? Below are categories that currently have only one company on the list (for now).
Some of these categories do not have the multi-tenanting and heavy supply concentration that can produce a “winner take most” result, while others may simply need more time before competitors emerge that can challenge the incumbents.
This year’s three categories to watch — Ticketing and Experiences; Shopping and Commerce; and Games — tend to resemble Travel more than Groceries, especially given the total addressable market (TAM) tailwinds in a post-covid world (more on that below). These categories have a large and varied TAM, and can likely support multiple marketplace giants.
Biggest moversThe biggest list movers came from Shopping and Experiences
This year, even after adjusting for the methodological change, there was one unmistakable leader in upward movement on the list. Whatnot, a marketplace for collectible resale, posted the largest one-year jump in the Marketplace 100’s history. It rose from #99 last year to #26 this year — more than three times the gain of any other company on the list. For the second year in a row, Whatnot is the fastest-growing Marketplace 100 company.
This happened as U.S. consumers started embracing livestream video shopping, and Whatnot broadened beyond its original Funko Pops focus into trading cards, sports cards, comics, and more. Whatnot’s expansion reflects the broader rise of livestream selling. In a year when many were ready to leave their homes and return to in-person activities, Whatnot’s ongoing explosive growth shows that, with or without quarantine, live shopping and niche collecting are here to stay.
The marketplace with the second-biggest rankings shift was also in Shopping. Curated (#54) supports a next-generation commerce experience that pairs consumers with experts to shop in specific categories, beginning with sports.
The other three biggest movers are all in the Experience category, highlighting how consumers have shifted leisure spending after COVID. ResortPass (+20 spots) lets users reserve day passes to hotel amenities, GameTime (+20 spots) allows last-minute booking of tickets to sports games and concerts, and Boatsetter (+17 spots) is a boat rental marketplace.
Opportunity in Ticketing, Food & BevNewcomers reveal opportunity in Ticketing and Food & Beverage
One-third of this year’s new entrants landed in two categories: Ticketing and Food & Beverage. Among these categories, the highest-ranking new entrants were #11 Peek, a marketplace for consumers and companies to book experiences, and #13 Goldbelly, a platform that lets gourmet food brands provide nationwide delivery.
Several of the year’s fastest-growing companies, measured by growth in marketplace activity, were in Ticketing. As vaccines were distributed across the country, consumers took the chance to gather at sporting events, concerts, and festivals. Dice, Tixr, Fever, TodayTix, and TickPick appeared on the list for the first time, joining companies like ViaGoGo and SeatGeek, which both ranked in the top five.
Even with Instacart at the top of the list for the second straight year, new Food & Beverage marketplaces began to pick up steam. With (some) companies trying to entice employees back to the office with added perks, catering marketplaces boomed. ezCater climbed five spots to #25, and freshmen Fooda and LunchDrop joined it.
Meanwhile, consumers still working remotely kept trying new at-home food options: freshmen in this category included Goldbelly (#13), EatStreet (#22), and CookUnity (#49).
Another top category this year for freshman companies? Education. Although some schools resumed in-person learning in 2021, the effects of so much time out of the classroom kept rippling through for teachers, students, and parents.
Teacher stress and burnout have reached record levels, as educators work to help students return to a pre-COVID path, while also dealing with new behavior problems. This has fueled the growth of sites like TeachersPayTeachers (which debuted at #8 this year), which lets teachers buy lesson plans and other teaching materials from one another.
On the student side, Preply and Studypool also debuted as freshmen on this year’s list. Both marketplaces let students receive extra help from tutors.
Vaccine rates and category resurgenceVaccine rates were closely tied to a resurgence in several major categories
2021 was a story of two periods: before and after vaccines. As vaccines rolled out nationwide, many categories saw sharp reversals in activity from 2020. Categories that had been crushed by covid rebounded to normal, while others that had benefited from quarantine slid back down.
The clearest example of this came (again) from Ticketing. In 2020, total GMV for the Ticketing category dropped by more than 50%, putting it in the bottom three categories by performance. In 2021, Ticketing staged a huge comeback, ranking as the #1 category in terms of change in marketplace activity for 2021. But it did not begin that way: Nearly 40% of Ticketing marketplace activity happened in Q4 alone, as nationwide vaccination rates neared 70%.
Incumbents SeatGeek (#3), Viagogo (#6), and Gametime (#24) all rode this rebound to move up several places on this year’s ranking. We also observed six new entrants in Tickets. Notable examples include Fever (#23), which curates top local experiences in major cities, and Dice (#47), which focuses on tickets for virtual events, livestreams, and some IRL events.
Childcare did the same, with nearly 91% of marketplace activity occurring in Q4. As schools moved back and forth between remote and in-person, Sawyer (#53) provided alternate learning options for children through online and in-person classes and experiences. UrbanSitter (#97) helped parents locate sitters as in-person events grew more frequent.
The 'new normal' for Gaming, ShoppingGaming and Shopping benefited from a “new normal,” even after vaccines
There may be no clearer sign of a durable covid habit than gaming. Time in games surged in 2020 — and, somewhat unexpectedly, kept climbing in 2021!
Only two gaming companies appeared in the Marketplace 100, yet both outperformed their size. Each landed in the top 20 and generated nearly 10% of all marketplace activity, making Games the second-largest category after Groceries (which is mostly driven by Instacart).
Valve, the company behind Steam, held the #2 position on this year’s list, while Epic Games’s marketplace entered at #20. Both Valve and Epic’s marketplace let consumers buy games and in-game items.
Comparing pre-covid and post-covid patterns, especially the leap from Q1 to Q2 2020, makes it clear we are now in a “new normal” for games. Quarantine likely played at least some role, as both gaming adoption and average time spent gaming rose sharply. Many consumers have built deep in-game identities and relationships they are unwilling to abandon. The metaverse is here to stay, and we expect spending on Games to keep increasing.
Likewise, Collectibles (within Shopping) has experienced a major covid-era surge that also seems to be enduring. Several forces are contributing. Quarantine lifted sales of tabletop games to record highs, along with their digital counterparts, such as Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. That in turn increased interest in cards for these games on marketplaces like TCGplayer (#12).
Beyond tabletop games, time at home led consumers to return to their collections of broader collectibles. Many turned into sellers (or buyers) on video-first platforms like Whatnot (#26), which also doubled as entertainment during lockdown! This brought about a new cohort of collectibles traders, who appear unlikely to give up their new passion even after quarantine.
Bonus: The rise of NFT marketplaces
Although on-chain crypto transactions are not captured by credit card panel data, NFTs were a major and meaningful part of the consumer marketplace story in 2021.
Below are the leading NFT marketplaces by all-time marketplace volume, according to Dapp Radar data. NFT purchases have affected multiple spending categories — specifically Games, Art, and Shopping. As NFTs (and crypto tokens more broadly) increasingly serve as “access passes” or act as credentials for different communities and experiences, we expect them to appear in Ticketing and Education in the years ahead, too.
New trends for the marketplace modelThe Future of the Marketplace Model
At a16z, we speak with dozens of early stage marketplaces every month, and while the startup marketplace model is clearly still thriving, we’ve noticed some new developments in how the business model itself is evolving.
First, more startups are emerging to help both consumer and business suppliers multi-tenant across multiple marketplaces within a category. This often means listing and managing inventory across several sites at the same time.
Because these companies expand sellers’ ability to multi-tenant, they weaken “winner takes all” dynamics. Some categories where this is starting to appear include Clothing (a seller can list on Depop, thredUP, and Poshmark in one click through sites like OneShop or Flyp), Rideshare (drivers can automatically switch between Uber and Lyft based on fares and demand with apps like Mystro), and Food Delivery (restaurants can manage and optimize listings across DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub through platforms like Otter and Deliverect). It is still early days for these intermediaries, but the next generation of marketplaces will need to compete harder to keep supply.
We’re also seeing more marketplaces being acquired by other marketplaces, which could affect a company’s ability to “lock down” a category. In both 2020 and 2021, most of the companies that “graduated” from the Marketplace 100 were acquired — and many of those deals were by other marketplaces!
This year, Bandcamp (#29 on last year’s list) was acquired by Epic Games, Tradesy (#41) was acquired by Vestiaire Collective, Depop (#46) was acquired by Etsy, and Breather (#100) was acquired by Industrious. This follows the 2021 acquisitions of Drizly and Postmates by Uber, and LetGo by OfferUp.
In some instances, like Etsy’s purchase of Depop, or Industrious’ of Breather, these deals feel like a natural match, since the businesses were adjacent or even competing. In other cases, such as Epic Games’s acquisition of Bandcamp, it appears that one marketplace is buying another to move into a new vertical.
We’re also seeing many marketplaces grow beyond simply providing a place to browse listings and complete transactions. These “2.0 marketplaces” have built in buyer or seller tools that make the platform more appealing — sometimes even tying one (or both) sides of the marketplace to a subscription! One example on the list is ResortPass (#60), which focuses on letting day guests book resort amenities but also offers software that helps resorts upsell more services to overnight guests. Another is Headway (#81), which allows therapists to begin accepting insurance — and thus reach an entirely new demographic of patients.
The extra value these kinds of marketplaces deliver outweighs any value the buyer or seller could gain by trying to arbitrage across platforms. Especially in fast-growing categories with expanding TAM driven in part by new consumer trends, this kind of business model innovation could have a larger impact than the data can show today.
While marketplace activity this year was unprecedented, we expect even more disruption in 2022. A wave of exits for companies that shaped digital marketplaces, combined with new technologies and an evolving business model, has created an opening for the next set of marketplace giants to step in.
Methodology
Definition:
A marketplace is any platform that brings buyers and sellers of goods/services together and helps complete a transaction. Marketplace activity combines GMV, monthly active users (MAUs) in apps, and website traffic for each company on the list.
Data sources: The rankings for Marketplace 100 for 2022 combine three data sources: Bloomberg Second Measure, Similarweb, and Apptopia.
Bloomberg Second Measure, a transaction data analytics company that provides insights into company performance and consumer trends–across thousands of public and private companies. Note: Bloomberg Second Measure does not track some companies on the 2022 Marketplace 100 list.
- Bloomberg Second Measure data consists of billions of U.S. consumers’ credit cards and debit cards. It excludes non-U.S. consumers, business spending, receipt-level information, and payments made via cash, check, or EBT. Bloomberg Second Measure cannot reliably attribute bundled revenue streams. Tips are not reliably separated from purchases on marketplaces and may be included in some merchants’ GMV. Bloomberg Second Measure does not observe revenue from third-party retailers or other B2B revenue streams. Bloomberg Second Measure does not observe spending made with gift cards. Bloomberg Second Measure cannot reliably attribute purchases financed through third-party companies like Prosper and Affirm to the marketplace associated with the purchase. Bloomberg Second Measure cannot reliably observe spending financed through credits from selling on a marketplace. Bloomberg Second Measure does not observe revenue from corporate benefits partnership programs. Transactions correspond to some companies’ Gross Merchandise Volume, a significant portion of which is not revenue to the company. Bloomberg Second Measure does not observe online payments through iTunes or the Apple Store. Bloomberg Second Measure cannot reliably observe marketplace fees. Bloomberg Second Measure does not observe marketplace revenue generated by third-party referrals. Bloomberg Second Measure is cited as a source, but did not contribute to the analysis.
Similarweb: As the most trusted platform for understanding online behavior, investors use Similarweb’s estimated data daily to assess the digital performance of public and private companies in order to understand what is happening across the digital ecosystem. Similarweb provides data on one billion websites, 4.7 million apps, across 210 industries and 190 countries. Learn more here.
Timeline: The rankings were calculated over dates spanning January 2021 to December 2021. Year-over-year growth rates are counted as sales between January 2020 through December 2020 vs. January 2021 through December 2021.