Marketplace / platform
Revenue is a take rate on third-party transactions; GMV is not revenue.
What changes about the finance work: Incentive spend and two-sided cohort economics dominate
Relationships pointing at this node.
changes these tasks
3The task exists in this business archetype but behaves differently. The note is the point of the edge: it must say how it differs, not merely that it does.
Acquisition is two-sided: supply and demand have different costs, payback periods and churn rates. A blended CAC hides that one side is usually being subsidised to create liquidity for the other, which is a deliberate investment rather than an efficiency problem.
Gross collection from buyers and net remittance to sellers sit on opposite sides of the balance sheet, so DSO measured against net revenue produces a nonsensically large number. Measure days against gross billed volume and track the seller payable as a separate cycle.
Take-rate businesses gross-bill the buyer and remit to the seller, so billed volume tracks GMV while recognised revenue is only the commission. Forecasting off billings overstates revenue by an order of magnitude; the forecast object is really a GMV model with a take-rate assumption on top.