Industry · Marketplaces

AI for marketplace decisions
on both sides of the market

AI for marketplace decisions where balance is the whole product: liquidity bets, take-rate strategy, supply vs demand prioritization, vertical vs horizontal expansion — argued by opposed experts before you commit.

Start free See how it works

In short

Both. Vertical marketplaces benefit from The Strategist and The Customer reasoning about the specific industry; horizontal ones lean on The Growth Hacker and The Operator. Your Chief of Staff proposes the board for the motion you describe.

Last reviewed October 1, 2026

An example

One ask, start to finish.
What comes back is a memo.

How a board takes a call like this: her read, who sits, what they ask first, then the call — with how sure they are, who disagreed and the first step.

Marketplaces

Example · Board of 3

Should we raise our take-rate from 12% to 15% now, or wait until supply density is stronger?

Chief of staff

This one needs a board: The Growth Hacker, The Strategist and The Customer. The Growth Hacker finds asymmetric distribution wins on a bootstrap budget. Each researches alone first, then they react to one another — and on a decision, two of them take opposed sides.

The Growth HackerGrowth Experimenter
The StrategistCompetitive Expert
The CustomerUser Voice

Asked first

Could you test a small version of this before committing?

This weekWith some workNo

The board’s call

Hold take-rate at 12% for two more quarters.

Take-rate increases trigger supplier exodus before they trigger margin gain. Supply density drives demand-side conversion more than any promotion.

Confidence65 · Moderate

The Customer disagreed

“The board will pull for the take-rate move — be ready with the LTV argument”

First step Use the margin headroom to subsidize supply in your next three cities.this week

Board of 3 · up to 135 credits on the card · an example, not a recorded run

Other asks people bring here

Several asks in one message become several rooms, each with its expert and its own price on the card. Keep or drop any, then convene them together.

Do we over-subsidize supply or demand in our next city launch? — The Strategist, up to 85 credits
Should we pivot from horizontal marketplace to a vertical-specific one? — The Customer, up to 85 credits
When do we add a SaaS layer for our top-tier supply? — The Data Scientist, up to 85 credits

What you get

What she handles.
On this kind of call.

Frames the supply vs demand call

Which side do you over-subsidize this quarter? The Growth Hacker and The Customer surface what the dashboards miss about liquidity.

Stress-tests take-rate strategy

Higher take-rate now, or lower to compound supply? The CFO and The Strategist argue long-term unit economics against the short-term P&L.

Pressure-tests geographic & vertical expansion

Same city, deeper supply? Next city? Or a vertical-specific marketplace? The Operator and The Strategist work the sequencing.

Frames the platform vs aggregator vs marketplace identity

Are you a marketplace, a SaaS for one side, or an aggregator? The Strategist forces the positioning into the open.

Why SynthBoard

Why SynthBoard for this.
Not one voice. A board.

Built for two-sided economics

The Growth Hacker, The Customer and The Data Scientist reason about the liquidity, density and matching dynamics marketplace founders live with.

Decisions framed as supply vs demand

Most marketplace decisions are a supply-or-demand prioritization in disguise. A board names which it is — and which side you are neglecting.

The skeptic against the easy growth story

Marketplaces love GMV. Every board includes someone whose job is to argue against the obvious answer — here, GMV without margin, the growth that kills the business 18 months later.

Decisions that stay on file

Take-rate, subsidy and expansion calls get re-asked every six months. What you decided stays on file and comes back when a new ask would reverse it.

- Supply density drives demand-side conversion more than…From the memo
- New-city launches need the subsidy to hit the liquidity…From the memo
The call: Hold take-rate at 12% for two more quarters.You decided
The Customer: The board will pull for the take-rate move — be…The dissent
Take-rate increases trigger supplier exodus before they trigger…From the memoStill true?KeepNot quiteKeptShe uses it from here on

Who sits

The experts for this call.
Each one holds a position.

Your Chief of Staff proposes who sits for the call, and every board is built with someone whose job is to argue against the obvious answer. Name an expert and they take a seat; tell her who you want on your board and they sit by default. How many seats a board has depends on your plan.

Growth Experimenter

The Growth Hacker

Don’t debate it for a month. Test it for a week with $200, then read the numbers.

The Growth Hacker Growth Experimenter

Best on: Channels, cheap experiments, activation and referral loops.
Won’t let you: Scale a channel before one small test says it works.

Try asking The Growth Hacker

Start with

The Growth HackerOpen on every plan, Free included

Pick an expert

Hover, tap or tab throughSwipe, then tap one

GPT
Claude
Gemini
Grok

Seats are spread across model families: GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and more.

In their words

Every marketplace founder thinks the answer is “more demand.” Almost always it is supply density. A board is where you stop optimizing the wrong side and admit which constraint is binding.

The Growth Hacker Growth ExperimenterOn marketplace liquidity

Questions

Fair questions.
Straight answers.

What people ask before they bring this call to a board.

Does SynthBoard work for vertical marketplaces or only horizontal ones?

How does it handle the chicken-and-egg liquidity problem?

It argues the supply-vs-demand prioritization explicitly. The Growth Hacker makes the case for supply first; The Customer surfaces what the demand side needs to convert. The trade-off lands on the memo, with who disagreed.

Is this useful for B2B marketplaces or only consumer?

Both — the metrics shift. B2B marketplaces lean on The Sales Leader, The CFO and The Strategist (relationship sales); consumer marketplaces on The Growth Hacker, The Customer and The Marketer (volume). Same board, different seats.

Can it model the impact of a take-rate change on supply churn?

It reasons about the strategic shape of the trade-off — what take-rate increases tend to cost in supplier retention, how to phase the change, what to bundle alongside. It does not simulate your dataset; it tests your hypothesis.

How does this compare to hiring a marketplace consultant?

A marketplace consultant gives you one expert’s playbook for $10K–30K. A board seats experts who openly disagree. A board shows its price and time on the card before it runs — up to 135 credits for a 3-seat board on Free, about 6–10 minutes — and a board never bills above its card. Use a consultant for ongoing operational ownership; use SynthBoard for the high-stakes calls in between.

Will it work pre-launch, or only for marketplaces with existing data?

Pre-launch is a high-value use. The board tests your liquidity hypothesis, your take-rate assumption and your launch-city choice — the bets you make before there is any data.

SynthBoard (synthboard.ai) is one place for your business, your life, and every hard call. Your Chief of Staff keeps what you tell her on file, and 24 named experts on different AI models take the calls — one expert for a consult, a board with opposed seats for the hard ones — and hand back a memo with the call, the dissent and the first move. How it works.