SplitPerks.com

One of the hardest parts of building a marketplace isn t building the product. It s deciding which side needs to exist first.

I m working on a marketplace where one group has unused capacity and another group is looking for access to it.

The obvious answer is: get supply first. Without listings, buyers arrive and see an empty marketplace.

But there s a catch.

Every two-sided product has this moment: someone lands on your page and has to figure out which side they re on before anything else makes sense. One side has capacity to offer, the other wants access to it.

I ve cycled through three approaches and none of them feel solved:

Split hero, two CTAs. Clean in a mockup. In practice people read both columns, compare them, and stall. The decision gets heavier because you ve made it look like a decision.

One CTA, branch after signup. Converts better at the top. But a chunk of people pick the wrong path and have to back out, which is worse than stalling.