Off the cuff, look through the criticisms and try to figure out how to make your marketplace 10x better. If you can, talk to the people who made those criticisms directly to get even more information. These can even become your first users.
Also, users should probably be matched based on language and other similarities. For example, an architecture student would match with architecture grads who did programs in english.
Good luck!
Indie Hackers is my full-time job now. Is it "successful"? I think so! I've done over 90 interviews, and they've been read over one million times in the past 5 months, largely by you guys! I also made $2239 in December and hope to grow revenue another 50% in January. (As I do every month, I just blogged about that here: https://IndieHackers.com/blog)
I'm working on a podcast as well that I'm really excited about, as I've found it's a bit easier to get famous founders to agree to that format and to speak transparently about behind the scenes details.
Definitely encourage you to build out the podcast since it will provide even more value to your audience.
Best of luck!