Matchmakers:The New Economics of Multisided Platforms
Interview with David S Evans
March 6, 2018Sign Up to listen to full interview.
About David S Evans
Dr. Evans is the Chairman of Global Economics Group, LLC and based in its Boston office and the Co-Executive Director of the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics at University College London where he is also Visiting Professor. A specialist in the field of industrial organization, he has authored 6 major books, including two award winners, and more than 100 scholarly articles, which have been widely read and cited. He has BA, MA, and Ph.D. degrees in economics, all from the University of Chicago.
A substantial portion of his research, writing, teaching, consulting, and testimony in the last 20 years has concerned multisided platforms. His most recent book on this topic, Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms, co-authored with Richard Schmalensee and published by Harvard Business Review Press, won the 2017 Gold Medal in Economics for the Axiom Business Book Awards. His academic work was cited extensively by the US Supreme Court in State of Ohio et al. v. American Express.
Dr. Evans have taught classes on antitrust economics, and related topics concerning industrial organization and intellectual property, at the University of Chicago Law School, University College London Faculty of Laws, and Fordham University Law School. He has taught specialized courses on multisided platforms since 2012 and on the digital economy since 2016 at the University College London, both of which are live streamed to competition authorities around the world for instruction of officials and staff.
Dr. Evans’s expert work has focused on competition policy and regulation. He has testified in federal and state courts, and before arbitration panels, in the US and submitted oral or written testimony to courts in the European Union, China, and other jurisdictions. He has also made submissions to, and appearances before, competition and regulatory authorities with respect to mergers and investigations in the US, EU, China, and other jurisdictions.
Source: Global Economics Group
Interview Summary
Matchmakers have been around since the dawn of time, but in recent years they have turbocharged their business growth leveraging all the latest technologies.
Matchmakers, marketplace operators or platform developers are all focused on connecting demand with supply, offering access to two groups and often subsidizing one to ignite the business. OpenTable, Uber, Amazon Marketplace, GrubHub are just some of these successful matchmakers.
Richard Schmalensee and David S. Evands, authors of Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms, give a systematic account of multisided markets with a thorough explanation of deeply rooted historic origins where appropriate. In this easy-to-read book, the two distinguished economic advisers compile several examples of successful marketplace operators to illustrate how startups can learn from these businesses and boost their own chances of success.
Key Topics
- How do traditional and matchmaking business models differ?
- What is the deep rooted history of multisided business models?
- How can new startups learn from successful multisided platforms?
- Why is it difficult to launch a multi-sided platform business?
- How can entrepreneurs overcome the challenge of building critical mass?
- How can startups ignite the business by reducing market friction?
- What is the Zigzag strategy and how do dating sites, search engines and video games leverage it?
- How can singlesided management build a multisided platform?
- Which are the fundamentals that have endured over thousands of years and are now powered by technology and innovation that make the matchmaking business more scalable?
