Dan Hockenmaier
Head of Strategy & Analytics at Faire / Thumbtack
Head of Strategy and Analytics at Faire; helped scale Thumbtack in early days; has worked on more marketplace startups than almost anyone through his consulting business Faces One; expert in growth models and marketplace dynamics.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Dan Hockenmaier, who has worked on more marketplace startups than almost anyone through Faire, Thumbtack, and his consulting practice, shares the essential insight that marketplace operators are gardeners, not construction workers. He explains why a light touch is critical because marketplace ecosystems respond to changes with unpredictable long-term effects, and provides deep tactical guidance on growth models, incentive design, and marketplace strategy.
Leadership Principles
- → Running a marketplace is like being a gardener, not a construction worker — you need a very light touch because you're messing with an ecosystem you don't fully understand
- → In a marketplace, something you do today might cause a long-term effect two months later — tread lightly with core incentives and mechanisms
- → A SaaS business is linear (build features, sell), but a marketplace is an ecosystem — small changes can cascade unpredictably
Notable Quotes
"Running a marketplace, you're basically like a gardener. You have to have a very light touch. If you're building a SaaS business, you're a construction worker. For a marketplace, you're messing with this ecosystem that you don't actually really understand how it works."
— On the fundamental difference between building SaaS vs marketplace businesses
"Sometimes you might do something over here which drives this long-term effect two months later, and then you're going to be pulling your hair out trying to figure out what you did that made that thing happen. The main advice is to tread lightly."
— On the danger of tinkering with marketplace incentives
Want to know how you compare?
Take the Assessment