Marketplaces That Leverage Other Marketplaces

Published on April 20, 2015

Note: originally published at The Breakery.

[In your head]: "Marketplaces that leverage other marketplaces?"

[To my computer screen]: "Yes, it's just crazy enough to work."

CellBreaker.com, our two-sided marketplace, leverages other marketplaces to deliver comprehensive value to CellBreaker users, quickly, seamlessly, and easily.

The Problem CellBreaker Solves

Cell phone carriers treat contracts like they’re playing with Monopoly money. But that’s your money. Isn’t it time consumers had a way to play along too, and win?

We’re gamifying ‘contract justice’ by giving consumers a platform to play along–it is, after all, their money that’s at stake.

In doing so, we’re offering something Monopoly never could: real-life utility. We unlock the contracts consumers no longer want, enabling them, like free-agents, to switch service providers anytime they wish, which makes our platform a two-sided marketplace.

Side One

On one side, it’s a marketplace for consumers to get out of unwanted contracts.

The way that works is a combination of:

1. Beating the carrier at its own game of holding contracts over people’s heads, by
   1. Using breach-detection technology that
   2. Automates the process of terminating the contract, early termination fee-free,
   3. In a way that complies with the terms the contract dictates
2. Connecting competitor carriers directly with free-agent consumers,
   1. In a data-driven, platform-enabled way,
   2. So that competitor carriers acquire customers as efficiently and cheaply as possible and that
   3. The savings from reduced cost of acquiring that customer are passed on to the customer in the form of some cash incentive.

Side Two

The other side of the marketplace derives from the fact that we unlock “essential service” contracts, contracts for services that everybody basically needs. You cancel one cell phone plan, and you immediately need another one, for example. So the other side of the marketplace centers on the newly-freed customer’s imminent buying decision.

Our platform:

1. Taps into other marketplaces for available competitors’ contract services,
2. Converts the data pulled from those marketplaces into a normalized data set that can be
3. Intelligently compared to the data we know about what the customer currently pays and gets in return for that money, and thus
4. Issues data-driven purchase recommendations.

Altogether, this takes all of the legwork and guesswork out of making buying decisions for multi-layered services like cell phone TV, and internet.

CAN YOU THINK OF ANY OTHER EXAMPLES OF MARKETPLACES THAT LEVERAGE OTHER MARKETPLACES?