Marketplace Business Models for Management Consultants

What is the aim of this course?

More and more firms decide to build a marketplace on top of their existing businesses. Even with sufficient money, this is a pretty difficult undertaking. That is why they hire consultants to help them with this sort of project and build a successful marketplace.

In the course you will learn the following things:

1. What are the main drivers and challenges in the marketplace business model

2. How to create a marketplace

3. How to model the marketplace model in Excel

4. What kind of analyses you may have to do during consulting projects

5. How to perform analyses fast and efficiently during consulting projects

6. How to scale marketplaces

7. How to acquire customers and suppliers cost-efficiently

This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. I have carried out or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated a total of 2 billion additional EBITDA. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 220 000 students including people working in EY, McKinsey, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Adidas, Naspers, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Orange, and many others.

I teach through case studies, so you will have a lot of lectures showing examples of analyses, and tools that we use. To every lecture, you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excels as well as additional presentations, and materials shown in the lectures so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modifications, be applied by you or your team in your work.

Why have I decided to create this course?

Marketplaces are relatively new and complex businesses. You have to look both at the customer and supplier sides. It will be also challenging to build a marketplace if it is built on the back of an existing business. Those issues make it difficult to analyze such business during consulting projects. Most firms don’t give you the full toolbox that you need to do the analyses. This may lead to huge frustration during consulting projects and a lot of inefficiencies.

Therefore, I have decided to create this course that will help students understand or refresh the main skills and tools that they need during consulting projects devoted to marketplaces. The course will give you the knowledge and insight into real-life case studies that will make your life during a consulting project much easier. Thanks to this course, you will know what and how to do during projects devoted to marketplaces. You will master how to analyze data and draw conclusions from the analyses. On top of that, you will also master the essential information related to scaling the business efficiently.

To sum it up, I believe that if you want to become a world-class Management Consultant or Business Analyst you have to have a pretty decent understanding of the marketplaces business model. That is why, I highly recommend this course to Management Consultants or Business Analysts, especially those that did not finish business school. The course will help you become an expert in marketplaces on the level of McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and other top consulting firms.

In what way will you benefit from this course?

The course is a practical, step-by-step guide loaded with tons of analyses, tricks, and hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you understand, and analyze businesses. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will learn:

1. What are the main drivers and challenges in the marketplace business model

2. How to create a marketplace

3. How to model the marketplace model in Excel

4. What kind of analyses you may have to do during consulting projects

5. How to perform analyses fast and efficiently during consulting projects

6. How to scale marketplaces

7. How to acquire customers and suppliers cost-efficiently

You can also ask me any question either through the discussion field or by messaging me directly.

How is the course organized?

The course is divided currently into the following sections:

• Introduction. We begin with a little introduction to the course as well as some general info on how the course is organized

• Essential Concepts. We will first look at the essential concepts that we will need to better understand the marketplace business model. They will help us with more advanced issues.

• Modeling Cash Flow in Marketplaces. In the previous section, you learned how to create a simple business model in Excel for a marketplace. In this section, we will concentrate on modeling the Cash Flow.

• How to create a marketplace. Creating a marketplace is one of the most difficult business challenges. In this section, we will discuss certain issues that will help you improve your attempts at building a marketplace.

• Funnel Analyses. Funnel Analysis can be used to map and analyze a series of events that lead to a particular goal. In this section, we will discuss what is a funnel analysis and how you can use it to achieve better business results.

• Customer Acquisition. Without customer acquisition, you will not enjoy much growth. In marketplaces, you will spend a lot of time on optimizing and finding more optimal ways to acquire customers. In this section, we will discuss this topic in more detail.

• Scaling Business. Scaling is one of the most difficult stages in building firms, especially in marketplaces. You have to be faster than the first of firms to become number one in a specific market. In this section, we will loo at general frameworks used in scaling and how Amazon scaled its operations.

You will be able also to download many additional resources

1. Useful frameworks and techniques

2. Analyses shown in the course

3. Additional resources

4. Links to additional presentations, articles, and movies

5. Links to books worth reading

At the end of my course, students will be able to…

• Understand how the marketplace business model works

• Analyze the performance of a marketplace in Excel

• Create a financial model of a marketplace in Excel

• Define the optimal strategy for starting and scaling a marketplace

• Optimize the customer & supplier acquisition costs

Who should take this course? Who should not?

• Management Consultants

• Business Analysts

• Managers

• Financial Controllers

• Investment Analysts

• Startup Founders

• Managers responsible for Acquisitions and Mergers

What will students need to know or do before starting this course?

• Basic or intermediate Excel

• Basic knowledge of economics

• Basic or intermediate knowledge of finance & accounting