Last Thursday, we hosted a private marketplace-themed event in San Francisco, The Holy Grail of the Marketplace: The Virtuous Cycle. More than 75 marketplace founders and investors attended the event – coming from as far as South Africa and Nova Scotia.

We initially started bringing the marketplace community together when we published our Guide to Marketplaces. And nights like these prove that this space is just as dynamic and promising as ever. We learned of many awesome new marketplace concepts, and it’s great to see that both investor and founder interest remain high. There was a great lineup of speakers, some very stimulating side conversations – and I was continually reminded how important it is for everyone to step back from the day to day and get together in person.

Some highlights of the evening included: Slava Rubin (Indiegogo – a V1 portfolio company) talking about how to expand LTV/marketplace size over time; Mikhail Ledvich (Shippo – also part of the V1 family) discussing how to grow B2B marketplaces (it’s very different than B2C marketplaces); and Anthony Marino (ThredUp) talking about moving from a pure marketplace to a managed marketplace.  And we were fortunate enough to have a fireside chat with Andrew Chen, who runs growth at Uber.

For those of you couldn’t join us, we will be sharing the insights from the evening in a series of blog posts over the next month, the first being a summary of growth strategies from Andrew Chen.

Thanks to all who came out and spent their evening with us. We’re looking forward to more meetups in the future.