Marketplace Planning

Planning software built for both sides of the market.

Anaplan and Pigment implementations for marketplaces. Take rate on GMV, supply and demand planned together, and cohort economics that run on both sides of the transaction.

30 minutes with our founders. No sales pitch, just answers.

Industry Challenges

Why marketplace planning is different.

Marketplace revenue is a slice of a transaction that happens between two other parties. The planning model has to start with that fact, or it starts with the wrong number.

GMV Is the Top of the Model

Revenue is a percentage of transaction volume, not a price you charge. The forecast has to start with GMV by category, geography, cohort, and channel, then apply take rate. A model built on revenue first has already flattened the interesting math underneath.

Supply and Demand Get Planned Together

A demand forecast without a supply forecast is a wish list. Buyer demand does not become GMV without sellers to fulfill it. Both sides get planned in parallel, per geography, per market-maturity stage, joined by the liquidity that ties them. A launch market and a mature market plan differently, even for the same category.

Liquidity Is What Actually Converts

Supply and demand can both look healthy while GMV drops, because the right listing was not in the right place at the right price. Match rate, fill rate, cancellation rate, and time-to-match decide how much of your supply and demand actually turns into a transaction.

Take Rate Is a Lever, Not a Constant

A single blended take rate hides everything worth planning. Rate varies by category, geography, seller tier, and whether the seller is on subscription or transactional. CFOs actively manage take rate as a growth-versus-margin lever. Etsy raised it in 2022. eBay compressed it. The plan has to model rate strategy across scenarios, not the current rate as a constant.

Ads and Monetization Stack on Top

Promoted listings, seller subscriptions, insurance and protection fees, and payment services often carry higher margin than the transaction fee itself. For public marketplaces, ads alone can approach twenty percent of revenue. Each stream has its own drivers, seasonality, and cohort behavior. They cannot be footnotes in the revenue plan.

Cohorts Run on Both Sides

Buyer LTV, seller LTV, and their retention curves are the real backbone of the model. Cohort math from a SaaS subscription playbook does not survive contact with a marketplace, because frequency, AOV, retention shape, and cross-side dependencies change the picture completely.

Core Services

What we build for marketplaces.

Finance-first. We start with GMV, take rate, and unit economics, then layer in supply and demand cohorts, ads and monetization streams, and volume-driven headcount.

Finance

FP&A & Unit Economics

Integrated P&L, contribution margin per transaction, and cash flow that respects the pass-through cash marketplaces sit on. Rolling forecasts and scenario testing on take rate, mix, cost per transaction, and regulatory risk. DAC7, Prop 22, and VAT changes get modeled explicitly, not absorbed after the fact.

Revenue

GMV, Take Rate & Ads Revenue

GMV forecasted by category and geography, take rate modeled by segment and subscription type, and separate revenue streams for ads, seller subscriptions, protection, and payments. Each stream planned properly, then rolled up.

Supply

Supply Cohort Planning

Seller acquisition, activation, retention, and productivity. Listings created, gross bookings per active seller, category density by geography, and the CAC-to-LTV math that decides how much to spend to acquire the next thousand suppliers.

Demand

Buyer Cohort Planning

Buyer acquisition and retention, order frequency, AOV by segment, and the cohort curves that show whether year-two buyers spend more than year-one. Marketing spend planned against payback, not vanity acquisition. Pigment's AI agents segment cohorts on live behavior data, surfacing which segments are actually driving payback rather than blending them into an average.

Operations

Volume-Driven Headcount

Trust and safety, category operations, seller success, and customer support headcount that scales with transaction volume, not straight-lined against revenue. Ops staffing that responds when GMV moves.

Support

Managed Services

Take-rate changes, new geo rollouts, new monetization layer launches, and quarterly refreshes as the marketplace evolves. We stay with the model through category expansions, regulatory shifts, and every board-facing take-rate decision.

Client Examples

Proven outcomes for marketplaces.

Upwork Anaplan
Two-sided
FP&A + headcount modeling

Marketplace planning models tying finance to two-sided business metrics. FP&A and headcount planning connected to marketplace growth and unit economics.

FAQ

Questions about marketplace planning

Why is marketplace planning different from SaaS planning?
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SaaS revenue comes from a price you set on a subscription. Marketplace revenue is a slice of a transaction that happens between two other parties. You forecast GMV instead of ARR, take rate becomes the biggest lever, and supply and demand have to be planned in parallel instead of as one funnel. A SaaS planning template applied to a marketplace flattens the parts that matter most.
Can you model GMV, take rate, and multiple revenue streams?
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Yes. The core model we build is GMV forecasted by category, geography, and cohort, take rate applied by segment and subscription type, then ads, protection, and other monetization layers modeled as their own streams. Each layer has its own drivers and seasonality. The plan rolls up to a P&L, and the layers stay visible so you can see where growth and margin are actually coming from.
How do you plan supply and demand together?
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With cohort models on each side that share the same time and geography dimensions, joined by a liquidity model in the middle. Supply cohorts drive listings and capacity. Demand cohorts drive orders and frequency. Liquidity metrics like match rate, fill rate, cancellation rate, and time-to-match decide how much of each side actually turns into GMV. You can flex an assumption on either side and see it move through both.
Which platform is better for marketplaces: Anaplan or Pigment?
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Both handle marketplace math well. Anaplan tends to fit large, mature marketplaces with heavy category and geo dimensionality, sophisticated ads businesses, and enterprise sales teams with complex quota modeling. This matters especially for B2B marketplaces like Faire, Toptal, or Upwork Enterprise, where a real sales motion drives supply acquisition. Pigment fits growth-stage and mid-market marketplaces where the finance team wants to own the model and move quickly. We hold no reseller agreement with either vendor, so the recommendation is based on your specific setup, not our margin.
Why Anaplan or Pigment over spreadsheets?
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Marketplace planning breaks a spreadsheet faster than most use cases. Two-sided cohorts across categories and geographies, take-rate scenarios, and stacked monetization streams create dimensionality that a spreadsheet cannot hold together for long. Anaplan and Pigment give you audit trails, version control, and live integrations that keep the model current instead of one person keeping it alive.

Ready to build planning for your marketplace?

Let's talk through your challenges: GMV forecasting, take-rate mix, two-sided cohorts, and platform fit.

30 minutes with our founders. No sales pitch, just answers.