S2E08 - How Curtsy drove $25M annual GMV with a team of 6 - David Oates (Curtsy)

Marketplaces have conquered some industries earlier and faster than others. Besides home-sharing and ride-haling, one such industry is fashion. The European second-hand clothing giant Vinted was founded in 2008. The US-based Poshmark started in 2011 and is now a listed company.

One might think there are no opportunities left for new marketplaces in these pioneer industries. One would be wrong. In this episode of Two-Sided, Sjoerd talks to David Oates, CEO and co-founder of Curtsy. Curtsy is thriving in one of the most crowded spaces for marketplaces: reselling apparel.

On the podcast, David shares the most important lessons they learned since Curtsy was founded in 2015:

• Be efficient: Curtsy reached $25M in GMV with a team of six.
• Start with one niche: Curtsy started as a peer-to-peer dress rental platform for sorority students in Southern universities in the United States.
• Don’t force your business model on your market: it took Curtsy some time to find out people wanted to sell rather than rent out their pre-loved clothing.
• Have big bets on your roadmap: David finds it important that Curtsy doesn’t only focus on incremental improvements.
• Get the best advice available: Curtsy was part of Y Combinator, which is generally considered one of the best startup accelerators in the world.

A very entertaining episode, showing that even crowded spaces have room for new entrants with an innovative approach.