Ramesh Johari
Professor at Stanford University
Ramesh Johari is a Stanford professor specializing in data science for online marketplaces, having advised Airbnb, Uber, Stripe, Bumble, Stitch Fix, Upwork, and many other major marketplace businesses.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Ramesh Johari brings an academic and practical perspective to marketplace building, explaining why marketplace management is fundamentally a whac-a-mole game where every improvement creates winners and losers. Drawing on his work with Airbnb, Uber, Stripe, and others, he covers how to fuel marketplace flywheels, design better review systems, and why AI will transform experimentation in marketplaces.
Leadership Principles
- → Marketplace management is a game of whac-a-mole — moving attention and inventory creates winners and losers
- → Recognize whether the winners you've created are more important than the losers in the process
- → Don't think of yourself as a marketplace founder — think of yourself simply as a founder
Notable Quotes
"Marketplaces are a little bit like whac-a-mole. Many of the changes that are most consequential create winners and losers. Rolling with those changes is about recognizing whether the winners are more important to your business than the losers."
— On the fundamental challenge of marketplace optimization
"You fix one side's experience and then you're like, 'Wait a second — now the other side is having a worse experience,' and your metrics keep moving around."
— On why marketplace changes always have second-order effects on the other side
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