GoFundMe CPTO on Building Marketplaces Across StubHub, TheRealReal & GoFundMe | Arnie Katz | E294

GoFundMe has facilitated over $40 billion in help since 2010, powering a community of more than 200 million people across 20 countries. Arnie Katz is the Chief Product and Technology Officer there — and a three-time CPTO, having previously led product and engineering at StubHub and TheRealReal. In this episode, he brings the rare perspective of someone who has built and scaled marketplaces at every stage, across multiple industries.What you'll learn:The three failure modes every marketplace must solve — cold start, imbalance failure, and false positive growth — and how to fix each oneHow GoFundMe is using AI agents to reduce friction for fundraisers, resulting in an expected $125 million in additional funds raisedWhy AI is driving revenue growth at GoFundMe, not just developer productivity — and how they sequenced that deliberatelyThe real trade-offs of the CPTO model: what you gain in speed, and what you have to mitigate through hiringHow GoFundMe is building demand-side and matching mechanisms to grow donation volume beyond viral sharingKey takeaways:Marketplace liquidity isn't just about having enough supply — it's about designing the right matching and demand mechanisms at every stage of scaleAI unlocks revenue opportunities that were previously uneconomical to pursue, especially when the customer is already in a vulnerable, high-friction stateThe CPTO structure enables faster decision-making, but requires consciously strong functional leaders underneath to offset the natural lean toward one sideCredits:Host: Carlos Gonzalez de VillaumbrosiaGuest: Arnie KatzSocial Links:Find out more about Product School hereFollow our Podcast on TikTok hereFollow Product School on LinkedIn here