Becoming a dominant Marketplace | Joe Steele, CEO of Bookatable

The Balderton Podcast: Tech Investment | Venture Capital | Startup Funding

Joe Steele, CEO of Bookatable, chats with Ben Goldsmith about how Bookatable have grown to put millions of diners in touch with 12,000+ restaurants in 19 European countries every single month... 0:00 Intro: How the Bookatable business evolved from Livebookings. 1:54 Why Bookatable's offering to restaurants is key to success. 3:00 Supply versus demand 4:40 It's a crowded market for both restaurants and customers... how does Bookatable achieve cut-through on such scale? 7:30 Bookable isn't just for good deals, you've got a deal with Michelin! How does that work behind the scenes? 9:05 Who are your customers? Does the Michelin deal help bring in more foodies? 10:30 Running a marketplace business with lower margins and/or purchase figures is hard: how you make the numbers work? how do you get the best LTV out of your customers? 13:00 Great advise from Joe Steele to future marketplace entrepreneurs: if you're running a marketplace business, your P&L needs to be built and structured entirely differently to other businesses, as success looks different to you. 15:10 Who is Bookatable's key demographics? 17:40 Is there a mobile versus desktop split in terms of experience or user behaviour? 19:30 Bookatable is huge now. Does the service differ from city to city, or country to country? 21:10 Stockholm v London v Munich: the differences in expectation for both restaurants and customers. 23:20 How should a marketplace business enter a new market? And why you shouldn't just try and 'copy/paste' your business model