Marketplace Signups vs Marketplace PMF: Why 10,000 Users and Zero Revenue Is Not Traction

Marketplace PMF is a fundamentally different thing from SaaS PMF, and applying the same validation framework to both produces actively misleading signals. The cold-start problem means early traction looks like supply-side registrations, not matched and completed transactions. Ten thousand seller signups with 200 completed transactions means you have 200 validated customers, the 9,800 unmatched participants are waiting, not buying. The signal that actually matters in a marketplace: repeat transaction rate among matched pairs, organic supply acquisition on third or later transactions, and the ratio of matched completions to total listings. Anything upstream of a completed transaction is pipeline data. Treating registration metrics as PMF evidence is building a pipeline report and calling it product validation.