Marketplace model: GMV, take rate and contribution
Buyer cohorts, GMV, take rate, contribution per order. Build GMV from buyer cohorts with retention and frequency by tenure, take it to net revenue through the take rate and incentives, to contribution per order and EBITDA, and judge a buyer’s lifetime value against its acquisition cost.
By Surojit Chakraverti, founder of L3VLUP and an investor running a long-short healthcare and technology equities strategy.
On this subject: marketplace model: gmv, take rate and contribution.Updated 2 October 2026
Who builds it, and for whatThe model an internet analyst keeps for a marketplace (food delivery, ride-hailing, travel, resale, local services) and the one a growth or venture investor builds before a round. It answers what subscription metrics cannot: how much of every dollar spent on the platform it keeps, what an order leaves after the costs that come with it, whether buyer cohorts spend more or less as they age, and whether the contribution a buyer brings repays what it cost to acquire them.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Assumptions | ||||||||
| 2 | Blue cells only. $ millions except per-order and per-buyer figures; buyers and orders in millions. FY0 is the base year. The marketplace is invented. | ||||||||
| 4 | Year | Unit | FY0 | FY1 | FY2 | FY3 | FY4 | FY5 | |
| 5 | Year number | # | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 7 | Buyers | ||||||||
| 8 | New buyers acquired (m) | $ | 2.00 | 2.40 | 2.80 | 3.20 | 3.60 | ||
| 9 | Share of a cohort still active in its second year | % | 50.0% | ||||||
| 10 | Share still active in its third year | % | 42.0% | ||||||
| 11 | Share still active in its fourth year | % | 38.0% | ||||||
| 12 | Share still active in its fifth year | % | 36.0% | ||||||
| 13 | Orders per active buyer in the year acquired | $ | 4.00 | ||||||
| 14 | Orders per active buyer in the second year | $ | 10.00 | ||||||
| 15 | Orders per active buyer in the third year | $ | 12.00 | ||||||
| 16 | Orders per active buyer in the fourth year | $ | 13.50 | ||||||
| 17 | Orders per active buyer in the fifth year | $ | 14.50 | ||||||
| 18 | Buyers on the platform at the end of FY0 (m) | $ | 5.00 | ||||||
| 19 | Share of those buyers still active each year | % | 90.0% | ||||||
| 20 | Their orders per active buyer a year | $ | 15.00 | ||||||
| 22 | Basket, take rate and incentives | ||||||||
| 23 | Average order value, FY1 ($) | $ | 32.00 | ||||||
| 24 | Average order value growth a year | % | 2.0% | ||||||
| 25 | Commission charged to sellers, % of GMV | % | 15.0% | ||||||
| 26 | Buyer incentives and promotions, % of GMV | % | 2.5% | ||||||
| 28 | Per-order and fixed costs | ||||||||
| 29 | Payment processing, % of GMV | % | 2.2% | ||||||
| 30 | Refunds and trust and safety, % of GMV | % | 0.5% | ||||||
| 31 | Customer support and operations per order ($) | $ | 0.40 | ||||||
| 32 | Marketing cost per new buyer ($) | $ | 30.00 | ||||||
| 33 | Technology, product and G&A, FY1 | $m | 150.0 | ||||||
| 34 | Growth in fixed costs a year | % | 5.0% | ||||||
| 35 | Discount rate for a buyer’s lifetime value | % | 12.0% |
Click any cell. The inspector names the line, the schedule it belongs to and what kind of cell it is; blue on cream is an input, black a calculation, green a value from another sheet. Scroll sideways to see every year.
Download
Marketplace model: GMV, take rate and contribution: the workbook
Native Excel, formulas live, no macros, no external links. Inspect it above first; the file is the same model with the formulas in it.
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What the base case says
- GMV, FY5
- $3,863.9m
- Net revenue, FY5
- $483.0m
- Net take rate
- 12.5%
- Contribution as a share of GMV, FY5
- 8.6%
- EBITDA, FY5
- $43.7m
- Cohort GMV retention in its second year
- 125.0%
- Year a buyer repays its acquisition cost
- 3
- Buyer lifetime value / acquisition cost
- 1.6x
Read from the workbook as served, every input at its default. Periods: FY0, FY1, FY2, FY3, FY4, FY5. The figures are invented and move with whatever you type in.
What this model is
A two-sided services marketplace five years forward, built from buyer cohorts: each year’s new buyers, the share still active in each later year, and how often the survivors order. Orders times basket size is GMV; the take rate less incentives turns it into net revenue; per-order costs leave contribution.
Marketplaces are judged on GMV retention by cohort, net take rate, contribution per order and whether a buyer repays what it cost to acquire them. The model reports all four, with marketing and fixed costs taking contribution to EBITDA.
Change retention or frequency and watch a cohort’s GMV hold up or fade; change incentives and watch net revenue and contribution move while GMV does not.
Seats: Equity research and hedge funds, Venture capital, Product and technology.
Careers that do this work: growth equity, venture capital, equity research, corp dev / m&a, bizops / strategy & ops.
How the schedules connect
Every row in the workbook is tagged with the schedule it belongs to; the inspector above shows the tag when you click a row. These are the schedules this model is made of and where each one lives.
Cohort GMV
Buyer cohorts, retention, frequency, orders, GMV
Assumptions, rows 8–20 · Cohorts, rows 6–12 · Cohorts, rows 15–23 · GMV, rows 6–9
Take rate
From GMV to net revenue
Assumptions, rows 23–26 · GMV, rows 12–15
Contribution margin
What an order leaves after the costs it brings
Assumptions, rows 29–34 · Contribution, rows 6–12 · Contribution, rows 15–19
Buyer economics
One cohort: GMV retention, LTV to CAC, payback
Assumptions, row 32 · Assumptions, row 35 · Buyer Economics, rows 6–13 · Buyer Economics, rows 16–19
What you should be able to explain
- Why GMV is not revenue, and why the net take rate after incentives is the number that matters.
- How a cohort’s GMV can grow while its buyer count falls, because the buyers who stay order more often.
- What contribution per order includes (processing, refunds, support) and why marketing and fixed costs sit below it.
- How operating leverage turns a loss-making marketplace profitable: contribution grows with orders while fixed costs grow slowly.
- Why buyer LTV to CAC is measured on contribution, over a stated horizon, not on GMV or revenue.
What a reviewer looks for
- Treating GMV as revenue, or the headline commission as the take rate.
- Booking buyer incentives as marketing, which flatters the take rate.
- Reporting cohort buyer retention without frequency, so a healthy cohort looks like a leaking one.
- LTV on revenue rather than contribution, or over an unlimited horizon.
- One blended retention rate for every cohort, which hides whether newer buyers behave like older ones.
Conventions this workbook uses
Stated on the cover sheet too. A model is only as trustworthy as the decisions it tells you it made.
- Annual periods. Buyers acquired in a year order at a first-year frequency that already reflects joining part-way through it, so they are counted as active for the whole year.
- Retention is the share of a cohort still active in each year of tenure; frequency is orders per active buyer by year of tenure. Their product is orders per buyer acquired, and its ratio to the first year is the cohort’s GMV retention.
- Buyers already on the platform at FY0 are carried as one mature group with a single retention rate and frequency.
- GMV is orders times average order value. Commission is a share of GMV; buyer incentives are a cost of winning the order and are netted from revenue, not counted as marketing.
- Contribution deducts the costs that come with every order: payment processing and refunds as shares of GMV, support per order. Marketing is the cost per new buyer times buyers acquired.
- Buyer Economics follows one cohort for five years at FY1 basket size and margins; lifetime value is its discounted contribution over that horizon only.
Build it yourself
The starter workbook
The cohort build has been cleared: active buyers and orders for each year’s cohort from retention and frequency by tenure, the buyers already on the platform, and orders and GMV. Build it so that net revenue, contribution and EBITDA come back to life, and the Checks sheet confirms cohort orders sum to the total.
Blanks: Cohort GMV. Free with any account. Compare with the worked model when you are done: download above.
The path around this model
Understand it, drill it, read the build, then apply it to a real company.
Build · Lab · ~12 min
Marketplace Economics
Turn GMV into net revenue and contribution per order, read a cohort’s GMV retention from retention and frequency, and find the payback year on a buyer.
Build · Lab · ~12 min
Unit Economics
Build an LTV:CAC you could defend under questioning, and answer payback as its own question.
Build · Lab · ~25 min
SQL Cohort Drill
Write the cohort, retention and rolling-active queries interviews ask for, and read each result without misreading it.
Read · Guide · 11 min
SaaS Operating Models: ARR, Sales Capacity, Billings and the Metrics That Follow
Read · Guide · 7 min
Equity Research Interview Questions: The Coverage Mindset
Read · Guide · 11 min
Financial Modelling Best Practices: The Conventions That Make a Model Auditable
Apply · Skill
Company Profile
Build a banker-grade one-pager on any company, fast.
Apply · Skill
Model Audit
Find the errors in a financial model before someone senior does.
Vocabulary: Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), Take Rate, Contribution Margin, Cohort GMV Retention, Two-Sided Marketplace, LTV to CAC.
Questions about this model
What is the difference between GMV and revenue?
GMV (gross merchandise value) is everything buyers spend through the platform. Revenue is the part the marketplace keeps: its commission from sellers less the incentives it pays buyers to win orders. Here the commission is 15% of GMV and incentives 2.5%, so the net take rate is 12.5%: $2.4 billion of FY1 GMV is $302 million of net revenue.
How can a cohort’s GMV grow while buyers leave?
Because the buyers who stay order more often. Half of a cohort is still active in its second year, but they order ten times a year instead of four, so the cohort spends 25% more in its second year than its first. That is GMV retention above 100%, the signature of a marketplace that has become a habit.
When does the marketplace make money?
When contribution outgrows marketing and fixed costs. Contribution rises with every order; technology and overheads grow 5% a year. EBITDA is a loss of about $3 million in FY1, turns positive in FY3 and reaches 9% of net revenue by FY5 as fixed costs are spread over more orders.
Is a buyer worth what it costs to acquire?
Only just, at these terms. A buyer costs $30 to acquire and brings $47.52 of discounted contribution over five years, a lifetime value to acquisition cost of 1.6x, repaid in the third year. A marketplace investor would want more, and the levers are frequency, incentives and the cost per new buyer.
What does it cost?
Nothing to inspect: the whole workbook is on this page. A free account chooses one worked model to keep, and downloads every starter workbook. L3VLUP Pro ($25/month) downloads the whole library and opens every model’s formulas in the inspector.
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