At Version One, we love marketplaces. Just look at our portfolio, and you’ll understand how important we think marketplaces are to the future of commerce. Over the past year, we have focused much of our blog content on helping marketplace founders build their companies. That’s because we realized that while there is a lot of great information for tech startups, not much of it deals specifically with marketplaces. And anyone building a marketplace company knows that marketplaces face unique challenges – including how to solve the chicken and egg problem with supply and demand and how to monetize when services are delivered offline. To that end, we put together a handbook, A Guide to Marketplaces. It compiles many of the insights we’ve learned from working with great marketplace companies and analyzing the industry. We hope the handbook helps you in your own journey to break down walls in how goods and services are bought and sold. There’s no single way to build and scale a marketplace, but the book can help you figure out your own path to build supply and spark the virtuous circle of supply and demand. Lastly, we’d love to hear if you find the content useful. What should we expand on? Did we leave anything out? Please leave a comment below or reach out to us directly.

Sometimes, life can be hard-especially for teenage girls. We have to balance an endless amount of new responsibilities all while trying to figure out who we are and who we want to be. Even though my life is constantly subject to change, there is one thing that remains constant: God. Because He is my Lord and Savior, I can find comfort in the fact that I don't have to face this difficult life alone. Confessions of a Teenage Christian is a book I am consistently updating. Each entry covers a topic either I've had a hard time understanding, or one of you have. I have felt God calling me to share my experiences of being a teen and sharing how He has forever changed my life.