Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Can you help me understand, timeline-wise, when you managed to get this two-sided marketplace figured out? By the way, this two-sided marketplace going through credit cards and escrow is a very popular trend today. In your evolution, you came to this conclusion organically. When was that in the history of your entrepreneurial journey?

David Ciccarelli: It was 2007. The company incorporated in 2005. This transactional platform, which we broadly call marketplace fees, came about in 2007. We had a bit of a bumpy start because, obviously, we had to figure some things out. It came into full effect from 2007 to 2008.

It was a horror story that serves as a lesson learned. Not only is this a difficult business model to pull off because you have two distinct customer groups with diametrically opposed needs and wants but the service provider also wants to have as much time as possible to perfect their craft and wants to get paid as much as possible. On the buy side, they want it as fast and as cheap as possible. For every feature we roll out, we often find that these would be in conflict with one another. It’s a very delicate balance to perform.

Sramana Mitra: How did these two sides find you?

David Ciccarelli: There are two answers. For aspiring entrepreneurs, I would certainly encourage this. Work with a partner but establish some ground rules. Ours was pretty simple. It was literally a 8.5” by 11” piece of paper with a line written down the middle and us saying, “I think you’re really good at this. You do those things.”

We identified the strengths in the other person as well as our own strengths, and rounded out the areas that we wanted to do. Stephanie was always the talent person. She would reach out to the talent. I was always on the client side. I believe I made 10,000 phone calls in those early days.

We would acquire a list and just pick up the phone a hundred times a day for six times straight. That was just what was necessary to make the same pitch over and over in order to generate some basic awareness. We also invested in Google AdWords very early. By doing so, we were learning the craft of SEO and creating content before content marketing was a thing.

We were one of the first in the industry paying pennies-per-click which are now dollars-per-click. Because we were early within the industry and took action, we were able to capitalize on new marketing channels as they came online.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of time-frame did it take for you to hit the million dollar benchmark?

David Ciccarelli: I want to say 2008.

Sramana Mitra: Do you remember how many sellers and how many buyers were in the marketplace at that time?

David Ciccarelli: We had about 10,000 total users.

Sramana Mitra: These were all transacting?

David Ciccarelli: No, probably a thousand were transacting.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli
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