Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms by David S. Evans
My rating on Goodreads: 3 of 5 stars
The word “marketplace” landed into our everyday vocabulary a couple of years ago – and since then, we’ve seen a lot of companies grow exponentially. The book Matchmakers targets to enlighten us about the mechanics of these businesses by approaching them holistically.
All in all, it does this pretty well. The book covers literally everything about the marketplaces and doesn’t approach it basically; instead tries to dive into them and explain all the details.
Yet, I’ve found it very weak for people who might have some interest in the industry in the past. Simply put, it could have been a set of long blog posts with a more intense content structure. Instead, the author tried to target a more general audience; but the book is not good there because it tries to explain some topics with new terms they’ve coined within the book in a technical way.
The thing I liked the most is the examples it includes. The book conveys the main pillars of marketplaces very well, and with examples, it strengthens the information. From that point of view, for sure the book is helpful. But, again, it’s very long and repeats itself a lot on many of the sections, which makes it a bit boring to read sometimes.
My expectation from the book was to have some technical approaches to the mechanics of the marketplaces and some interesting frameworks to understand them better. Yet, the book is weak from that angle and fails to provide enough advanced information to the readers.
A nice read for people who have no idea about the industry, but not a very fun read for people who have some experience. Stories are entertaining to learn from, but some sections are there because the author didn’t want to miss the point.
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