Sea Limited used its wildly popular game, Free Fire, to build brand presence and a user base in Brazil before even launching its e-commerce platform, Shopee. This unconventional strategy provided a massive, low-cost customer acquisition channel.

Zalando didn't try to stock everything at once. They first targeted very specific, high-intent searches like "Adidas Zamba size 46." Winning these allowed them to build capital and inventory to then capture broader searches for brands, categories, and eventually entire markets, creating a scalable growth loop.

Despite knowing customers would pay far more, Shopify intentionally underpriced its product. This lowered the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs, focusing on massive user acquisition and solving merchant problems first.

Before becoming massive platforms, many successful companies started with a narrow focus. Instagram was for bourbon drinkers, Amazon for used books, and Facebook for Harvard students. This strategy built a loyal early user base and refined their product before expanding to a broader market.

By ensuring over 90% of its Brazilian GMV comes from local sellers, Shopee built a significant defense against protectionist policies. This insulates them from regulations targeting foreign imports, a risk faced by competitors like Temu and AliExpress.

With experience at both eBay and Temu, Jennifer Deal warns that sellers must treat each marketplace as a unique ecosystem. A successful strategy on one platform won't work on another due to different business models, customer bases, and tools. Success requires a tailored approach for each specific marketplace, as the landscape is highly fragmented.

Despite Lazada having Alibaba's immense resources, Shopee won by empowering large, local teams in each market. This hyper-local approach to product, marketing, and seller support proved superior to Lazada's centralized, one-size-fits-all regional strategy.

The shopping app Dupe strategically focused on furniture, a category ripe for disruption because items are often white-labeled and consumers shop for the "look" rather than a specific brand. This model is harder to apply in logo-driven categories like high fashion.

Instead of competing on commodity products, Shopify aimed to create a 'monopoly on all products that are actually interesting.' This strategy focused on empowering creators of unique goods, disintermediating Amazon's dominance.