Two-Sided Marketplace MVP: From Zero to 200 Listings in 3 Weeks
How we built a services marketplace connecting local contractors with homeowners, complete with booking, payments, and review system.
Client: HomeHero (Confidential)
Marketplace homepage showing a search bar with location autocomplete, featured contractor cards with star ratings and pricing, and category filters for plumbing, electrical, and cleaning.
The Challenge
The founder ran a successful local cleaning business and saw firsthand how fragmented the home services market was. Homeowners relied on word-of-mouth or Craigslist to find contractors, and contractors had no online presence beyond a Facebook page. She wanted to build the 'Uber for home services' for her metro area. Previous attempts with WordPress plugins and Sharetribe fell apart at the payment split logic and booking calendar. She needed a real marketplace that could handle Stripe Connect payouts, contractor availability calendars, and a trust-building review system. Her goal was 200 listings and 50 bookings in the first month to prove the model before raising a seed round.
Our Approach
Marketplace MVPs have a chicken-and-egg problem, so we designed the supply side first. The contractor onboarding flow was a 3-step wizard: profile, services offered (with pricing), and availability calendar. We kept it under 5 minutes to minimize drop-off. For the demand side, homeowners could search by service type and zip code, view contractor profiles with reviews and pricing, and book a time slot. Payment was handled via Stripe Connect with a 15% platform fee. The architecture used Next.js for both the consumer-facing site and contractor dashboard, sharing a component library. PostgreSQL handled the relational data (users, listings, bookings, reviews), and we used Drizzle ORM for type-safe queries. The booking system used a simple slot-based calendar rather than complex availability algorithms. We integrated Resend for transactional emails: booking confirmations, payment receipts, and review requests. The review system was two-way: homeowners rated contractors and contractors rated homeowners, creating accountability on both sides. We deployed the frontend to Vercel and the API to Railway with a shared PostgreSQL instance.
What We Built
Delivery Timeline
Day 1-3: Data Model + Auth
Designed marketplace schema (users, listings, bookings, reviews), set up auth with role-based routing.
Day 4-7: Contractor Side
Built onboarding wizard, profile pages, availability calendar, and contractor dashboard.
Day 8-11: Consumer Side
Search, filtering, contractor profiles, and booking flow with calendar slot selection.
Day 12-14: Payments
Stripe Connect integration, platform fee logic, payout scheduling, and webhook handlers.
Day 15-16: Reviews + Email
Two-way review system, Resend transactional emails for booking lifecycle.
Day 17-18: Hardening + Launch
Security audit, load testing, seed data migration, and production deployment.
Tech Stack
Architecture
frontend
Next.js App Router with shared component library for consumer and contractor views.
backend
Next.js API routes with Drizzle ORM on PostgreSQL (Railway).
auth
Better Auth with email magic links for homeowners, Google OAuth for contractors.
data
PostgreSQL with Drizzle. Redis for search caching.
payments
Stripe Connect Express accounts with automatic payouts.
Security
rbac
Three roles: Homeowner, Contractor, Admin. Row-level data isolation.
secrets
Railway environment variables. Stripe keys rotated monthly.
monitoring
Sentry error tracking. Stripe webhook monitoring via dashboard.
qa
Playwright E2E tests covering booking flow and payment flow.
The Results
“I wasted $8,000 on a Sharetribe customization that couldn't handle Stripe Connect. HouseofMVPs built something 10x better in 18 days. We hit 200 listings before I even finished my pitch deck.”
Key Takeaways
Seed the supply side first. We pre-loaded 30 contractor profiles from the founder's existing network before launching to homeowners. An empty marketplace converts nobody.
Stripe Connect Express is the right call for marketplace MVPs. Custom accounts add weeks of compliance work for zero user benefit at this stage.
Two-way reviews are critical for trust in service marketplaces. Homeowners book 3x more when they see verified reviews.
Deliverables
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
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