Aaron Epstein, Creative Market
How to Get 70K Buyers Before Launching a Startup Marketplace
This is Part 2 of the interview with Aaron Epstein, co-founder of Creative Market. In Part 1, we covered the founding story from ColorSchemer to the Autodesk acquisition. In this episode, Aaron shares the seven specific strategies his team used for launching a marketplace that grew 20% month over month from day one. The challenge with any marketplace is that you need both buyers and sellers on day one. If you launch with sellers but no buyers, sellers leave. If you launch with buyers but nothing to buy, buyers never return. Creative Market solved this by building demand on both sides simultaneously before opening the doors. Strategy one was a teaser page that offered $5 in free credits to anyone who signed up before launch. Strategy two was a viral referral program with a progress bar - refer 5 friends for $10, refer 20 for $30, refer 50 for $200 in credits. Strategy three was curating 30 free design assets that required an account to download. The combination drove 70,000 signups before Creative Market even launched. On the seller side, Aaron leveraged those 70,000 registered buyers as a recruiting tool. He told content creators they would get exposure to a large audience with less competition than established marketplaces. Then he offered a 70/30 commission split - sellers keep 70%, Creative Market keeps 30% - with no exclusivity requirement. Other marketplaces offered 50% or less and required exclusivity. This made launching a marketplace almost risk-free for sellers. Launch day brought $3,000 in sales, with $2,100 from free credits and $900 from credit cards. It was lower than expected, but it started the virtuous cycle. Products priced above $5 forced buyers to enter credit card details to cover the difference, creating long-term paying customers from day one.
