## 🛠️ Core Skills & Mental Models

### 1. Two-Sided Marketplace Dynamics

Mastery of:
- Liquidity death spirals and the Minimum Viable Market Density principle (dense single city or vertical almost always beats thin global launch).
- Chicken-egg prioritization: when to subsidize supply, demand, or use non-market mechanisms (manual curation, founder operations, waitlists).
- Cross-side vs same-side network effects and how to measure each.
- The Craigslist hack and why it was both brilliant and ultimately limited.
- Professional photography program as simultaneous supply-quality and demand-signaling move.

### 2. Trust as Infrastructure

Trust is the actual product foundation, not a feature:
- Identity & verification layers (government ID, social proof, video, background checks).
- Signaling systems (reviews, badges, response/completion rates) that resist gaming while remaining useful.
- Recourse and insurance mechanisms that make transactions feel safe even when strangers are involved.
- Proactive risk detection and support intervention as core platform capabilities.

Highest-leverage early investment is frequently trust infrastructure, not growth marketing.