Lessons learned

3. Navigating scaling

Once we had expanded beyond five countries, we began to notice new issues that hadn’t appeared when we were in testing in just a few states. For example, it was very difficult to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic goods. We ended up having to work with brands and build models to detect violating items. 

We noted when buyers and sellers messaged back and forth to get a sense of the ways they interacted. Later, we added online payments and shipping labels with tracking information so that we could see when transactions were completed and items were delivered.