7 Go-to-Market Lessons from Skillit’s Journey to Revolutionize Construction Hiring

Building a two-sided marketplace is challenging enough, but doing it in an industry resistant to technological change adds another layer of complexity. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Skillit founder Fraser Patterson shared crucial insights about scaling a B2B marketplace in the construction industry. Here are the key go-to-market lessons that emerged from their journey.

1. Start with a Deep Understanding of Both Sides

The foundation of Skillit’s success lies in Fraser’s unique perspective as both a former carpenter and general contractor. This dual experience helped identify a critical insight about skilled trade assessment: knowledge can serve as a proxy for practical skills. “If you were to ask somebody, say, a physics question… you might be able to kind of fudge your way through a bit of convo about calculus,” Fraser explains. “But when you understand things about construction… that’s unlikely that you’re staying up at night reading nailing patterns or something before you go to bed. That’s reliable indicator of your level of skill.”

2. Embrace Constraints as a Growth Strategy

Rather than trying to serve everyone immediately, Skillit took a deliberately focused approach. “Building a labor marketplace or any kind of marketplace is pretty insanely difficult to get off the ground,” Fraser notes. Their solution? “Really leaning into those constraints and deciding to apply those constraints to focus… we’re going to start in one region with a handful of trades. That’s all we’re going to offer.”

3. Build Product-Led Growth Engines

Skillit’s growth strategy centers on product excellence and user engagement. “I think what I care about the most is building at this stage a product that our customers love,” Fraser emphasizes. “I really believe that engagement and retention are fundamentally the most important growth engine we have… if you solve for engagement, if you’re actually solving something the segment of the market loves… then we build this super efficient growth engine.”

4. Design Your Business Model for Network Effects

The platform’s subscription model for employers while remaining “free and frictionless” for workers creates natural network effects. Fraser’s team is “starting to productize some of those and create some viral loops. The ability for our recruiters to collaborate with one another and share with their subcontractors who have the same recruiting challenges.”

5. Create Content That Intercepts Customer Pain Points

Instead of generic marketing, Skillit focuses on addressing specific challenges. “We have a really strong content strategy writing specifically about the challenges that we know our customers are facing,” Fraser shares. This content naturally intersects with potential customers when “they’re searching for solutions to finding trades in their respective regions.”

6. Focus on Retention Over Pure Growth

In today’s market environment, Fraser emphasizes efficiency over pure growth: “The world is rotated away from cheap money and growth at all costs and top line MAU and top line revenue as a single KPI, we got to be efficient in terms of how we scale.” This philosophy has driven their focus on engagement and retention as primary metrics.

7. Build for Long-Term Category Leadership

Rather than just solving immediate hiring challenges, Skillit aims to transform the industry. “The big vision here is, can we use that proprietary data and that digital infrastructure to help train and upskill the talent network… to become increasingly valuable to employers?” Fraser explains. “I think we can make skilled labor one of the greatest assets on earth.”

These lessons have driven impressive results: 540% year-over-year customer growth, with half acquired in Q4 alone, and 1000% year-over-year worker growth. But perhaps more importantly, they’ve created what Fraser calls “a category of one” – proving that even in traditional industries, innovative go-to-market strategies can create significant competitive advantages.

The key takeaway for founders? Success in B2B marketplaces isn’t just about rapid scaling – it’s about understanding your market deeply, focusing your efforts strategically, and building products that users genuinely love to use.