The marketplace business model
A marketplace connects buyers and sellers who transact directly, without the company ever owning the inventory that changes hands. It is one of the most common — and most misunderstood-at-a-glance — business models in the region.
The basics
Asset-light scaling
Because the company never owns inventory, it can add supply and demand without the capital intensity of a D2C or asset-heavy business — MercadoLibre does not own the products sold on it any more than Airbnb owns the apartments listed on it.
Network effects
More buyers attract more sellers, and more sellers attract more buyers — the classic two-sided network effect that, once it takes hold, becomes a real moat against new entrants.
The cold-start problem
Before the network effect kicks in, a new marketplace has neither buyers nor sellers to offer each other — solving this "chicken and egg" problem, often by manually seeding one side first, is usually the hardest early milestone.
Why GMV is not revenue
Gross merchandise value (GMV) — the total value of everything transacted on the platform — is a common metric in marketplace pitches. It is not revenue. Here is the difference on a single sale.
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Sale price (counts toward GMV) | $100 |
| Marketplace take rate | 10% |
| Marketplace revenue | $10 |
| Seller receives | $90 |
A marketplace can report large, impressive GMV while generating a small fraction of that as actual revenue — always ask for revenue and take rate specifically, not just GMV.
What to watch for
Disintermediation is the other central risk: once a buyer and seller find each other through the marketplace, nothing physically stops them from transacting directly next time and cutting the platform out of its fee. Marketplaces defend against this with trust, payment processing, dispute resolution, and logistics that are genuinely hard to replicate off-platform.
See our business & revenue models overview for how marketplace pairs with take-rate, advertising and subscription revenue models in practice.