At Sonnet, we are trying to build an AI-native marketplace for global trade of physical goods.

Anyone who has learned about marketplaces knows that disintermediation is the death of any marketplace - meaning supply and demand goes off the platform to transact because they don’t want to get charged a platform fee.

This is something we keep thinking about too: how do we make ourselves irreplaceable? How do we make Sonnet so good that neither side would want to transact off-platform?

Last week during our company meeting, Huey gave me a couple examples to think about: Uber/Grab and Doordash/Meituan.

Why do we use Uber? We could totally just wait on the street to find taxis, or we collect the contact info of all the drivers in our city and call them when we need a ride.

Wait, I am a developer, so I can totally build myself an agent that can automatically call every driver, but the cost and the effort to do this dramatically outweighs the commission we pay Uber for arranging the ride.

Plus, you get all of these:

• Instant liquidity: plenty of drivers that are 2-3 minutes away waiting to pick you up
• Unified pricing and payment: no negotiation needed, no cash, no invoicing overhead, just one tap
• Centralized trust system: ratings, GPS trace, insurance and support
• Single interface for the entire job: request -> match -> ride -> pay -> receipt, all in one

All it takes is downloading an app and let them take commission every ride.

For supply side, Uber is also providing tremendous value too (though Uber might keep north of 50% from what riders pay …). Drivers still have the option to pick people up from the street but only taxis can do this as they are certified to do so, plus their taxi car appearance; normal passenger vehicles cannot. But the problem is without the platform, drivers would not get enough leads.

Think about if you get 5 rides a day without needing to pay commission for Uber, versus you get 25 rides a day paying 50%, your income is still greater than doubles the base case. You also don’t have to worry about riders hopping off the car as soon as your trip is done.

Let’s look at DoorDash / Meituan.

When I was in middle school, I love McDonald (still do). And I have a couple delivery guys in my contact list. Whenever I want McDonald, I called them to pick up the food and deliver it to me, all for 15 RMB. I did the same for other restaurants.

The alternative at that time was the owner of the restaurant would sometimes do delivery if he’s free / if the customer lives nearby / if he wants to show great customer service, but that is usually free of charge.

Meituan and DoorDash changed the way we interact with food ordering and take-out completely.

As a consumer, I can now order from tens of thousands restaurants around me by lifting a finger. I can also check every restaurants menu (without needing to call the restaurant), engage in async communication with the restaurant (self-serve, no need to call the chef) to order food, knowing that the platform will automatically dispatch delivery drivers to fetch my food for me. I can also check out photos and reviews from other users to see if the restaurant is worth trying. Lastly, I can pay and get my receipt in one flow.

For restaurants, the value is just as big. They get a steady stream of orders from customers who might never set foot in their neighborhood. They can focus on cooking instead of hiring and managing their own delivery fleet. The platform gives them analytics on what sells, control over menus and pricing, promo tools to smooth demand across the day, and even the ability to spin up virtual brands that live only inside the app.

At the system level, Meituan and DoorDash are managing an efficient orchestration of separation of labor/concern. Restaurants specialize in making food, delivery fleet takes care of the last-mile delivery. Much much more transactions are happening than pre-mobile and pre-meituan/doordash, more $ is flowing through the system and to the service providers, more benefits and values are created for all parties than any individual restaurant or driver could achieve alone.

Back to Sonnet, the reason why we are doing discovery calls on both sides is to find out the painful problems for both sides, and “what are existing alternatives not serving both sides really well that is poised for a real revolution?” It has to go beyond discovery and match-making, but re-wires the underlying workflow on both sides so thoroughly and efficiently that going off-platform = giving up liquidity, intelligence, and orchestration, not just paying 0 commission to a “middle-man”.