When building a platform or marketplace, should you target top-tier high-profile experts first or focus on accessible, niche talent?

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Accepted Answer

My basic rule of thumb is to not confuse prestige with traction.

Our play book will probably be to go after accessible excellence, not the biggest names. Sure, big experts can create buzz, but they are expensive in time, attention, ego, and negotiation — and they often don’t help you learn fastest since you are usually just a small piece of their world. For a community like Wisen, we're starting narrow: one specific category (mentoring), one clear use case (a-sync written messages), and a small group of credible experts (just me for now) who will engage, give feedback, and help us improve the product.

As we grow, we'll be disciplined about not jumping too quickly to a new category. Ten highly relevant experts in one niche beat 500 impressive names scattered everywhere. First we have to prove this marketplace works: that users find value, that experts earn money, that hand-raises repeat, and that the overall experience is strong. Then we can use that evidence to recruit more and bigger names.

On media-for-equity: i'm generally synical. Media amplifies what already works; it doesn’t create product-market fit. If your positioning, retention, unit economics, or supply-demand balance are shaky, it just amplifies your problems (but it does help you see your problems faster - but the equity will be gone and you're not going to get it back).

As always - it boils down to doing the unscalable things first. Learn, prove, then amplify.