War-game a marketplace expansion before you fund a new category, geography, or supply cohort you cannot quietly unwind.
Marketplace expansions fail when supply is invited before demand is real, when trust and quality bars slip to hit launch volume, when take-rate math ignores support and dispute load, and when the incumbent in the new vertical already owns the habit you plan to disrupt. A growth slide is not evidence.
What to put on the table
One sentence for the expansion thesis, the vertical or geo, the first-wave supply target, the demand channels, the take rate, and the trust standard you will not dilute. Attach cohort economics from the core market, supply acquisition cost assumptions, dispute and refund baselines, and the competitor or incumbent messages already in market. If growth, trust, and finance disagree on quality bars, stop and reconcile before the review.
Name the decision you will make if the war game finds nothing new, and the kill criteria that would pause supply invites or pull geo spend. Those two lines keep the review from becoming endless option shopping.
Attack surfaces
- Supply quality: who gets invited, who gets rejected, and how you enforce the bar.
- Demand proof: whether buyers already search for this vertical on your platform.
- Trust and disputes: review integrity, refunds, and chargeback risk in the new cohort.
- Unit economics: take rate versus support, payments, and acquisition cost.
- Incumbent response: the cheapest counter and the segment they would peel.
Optional counsel seat if the vertical touches regulated goods or disclosures. Optional ops seat if fulfillment or verification capacity is the real constraint.
How to run it
Feed Pingpong the expansion memo and exhibits. Instruct early passes to steelman the thesis, then seat buyer, supply, finance, trust, and competitor attacks. End with a pass that turns surviving objections into tests, narrower pilots, or a delayed open. Delete invented GMV, invented take rates, and invented competitor quotes.
When the plan leans on a cold-start subsidy, force a day-ninety narrative: what happens when incentives end, what quality looks like in the unsubsidized cohort, and what support load remains. If those stories are stronger than your expansion thesis, fix the package before you open the vertical.
Separate liquidity theater from durable two-sided density in the memo. If paid demand assumes organic supply that has not shown up, say so. Ask finance and trust seats to attack blended CAC and dispute rates until every channel and supply cohort has its own definition and its own kill criteria.
Related: before you enter a new market, stress-test a go-to-market plan, war-game a product launch, pretend you are the buyer, pretend you are the competitor, and war-game your strategy. Process: how to run a Pingpong.