“If you build it, they will come.”
It’s one of the most quoted lines in startup history. It’s also one of the most destructive, and the reason is simple. Because it sounds right, it feels right, and it is a saying that gives permission to builders to do what they already want to do: build.
The lie is subtle
In Field of Dreams, the field does work. Of course it does, it’s a movie after all. The players come, then some magic happens, and the story rewards the builder, and it would be a crappy movie if it didn’t. If we want to put it into context and base things on reality, the field is the least important part of the system.
What you’re actually building
Every marketplace founder thinks they’re building “the field.” You start with the product, the platform, and the infrastructure. However, a two-sided marketplace is not a field; it’s actually much more complex than that, because you have to factor supply to demand, and demand to supply, and keep repeating it over and over until it finally works.
If you break the loop at any point, the whole thing collapses, and most founders find this out the hard way.
Most founders simply build the field and wait for the players to come. Often yelling, “Why aren’t they coming? This is one hell of a field”.
The empty field problem
An empty marketplace is worse than no marketplace, because it sends a signal that nothing is happening here. For those familiar with the sitcom Silicon Valley, you will remember this scene where Russ Hanneman steps in at the suggestion of turning on revenue.
Russ Hanneman: No. If you go after revenue, people will ask how much, and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100x’er, 1,000x’er becomes the 2x dog. But if you have no revenue, you can say you’re pre-revenue. You’re a potential pure play. It’s not about how much you earn. It’s about what you’re worth. And who’s worth most? Companies that lose money.
If someone comes to your marketplace and thinks, “Nothing is happening here.” No sellers, and then buyers leave. If there are no buyers, then sellers never come. If there is no activity, then everyone assumes they’re early, and they exit.
You didn’t build an opportunity; you built and delivered a proof of failure.
The myth of balance
Here’s where it gets dangerous. Founders think, “We just need to grow both sides at the same time.” This is clean, logical and wrong. No marketplace in history started balanced, not a single one; they all started unfair.
What actually works
The winners pick a side and go violently on it. They don’t “build the field,” they instead manufacture the game**.**
- Uber didn’t wait for riders; instead, they overpaid drivers
- Airbnb didn’t wait for hosts; instead, they created supply
- Apple didn’t wait for developers; instead, they shipped users
They broke the loop on purpose and then forced it to restart in their favor.
The uncomfortable truth
If you’re early, one side of your marketplace is fake. And by fake, I mean it’s subsidised, scripted, curated, and manually driven. It doesn’t mean your marketplace is flawed; it means you are doing your job. n
“If you build it…”
The real version of the quote should have been: “If you build it, nothing else happens.”
Because people don’t come for infrastructure and they aren’t in it for the tech, they come for liquidity, activity, and especially for other people. They come for proof that something is already working.
So what should you build?
Well, it sure as hell isn’t the field, not first anyway. You first need to get the first 100 suppliers or the first 1000 users, then obsess over making that side undeniable. You have to make it so damn undeniable that the other side just has to show up. It really is as black-and-white as that.
The inversion
The movie got one thing right, and it really nailed this part. It wasn’t really about the field but more so about belief. But not the kind founders think, because it’s not “If I build this, they will come,” but instead it’s “If I make one side work so well it looks inevitable, the rest will follow.”
Most founders are standing in a cornfield, polishing a perfect diamond, wondering where everyone is. The smart ones are not building the field; they are already playing the game.
