How do you make the role choice obvious in a two-sided product?

Every two-sided product has this moment: someone lands on your page and has to figure out which side they’re on before anything else makes sense. One side has capacity to offer, the other wants access to it.

I’ve cycled through three approaches and none of them feel solved:

Split hero, two CTAs. Clean in a mockup. In practice people read both columns, compare them, and stall. The decision gets heavier because you’ve made it look like a decision.

One CTA, branch after signup. Converts better at the top. But a chunk of people pick the wrong path and have to back out, which is worse than stalling.

Ask upfront — “which are you?” before anything. Honest, but it’s a wall between a stranger and your product. Bounce goes up.

What I’m starting to suspect is that the framing is wrong: maybe you pick a default side, design the whole page for them, and let the other side find their entry point further down. Airbnb doesn’t ask if you’re a host on the homepage.

For anyone who’s shipped a two-sided product — did you solve this in the hero, in onboarding, or did you stop trying to solve it and just pick a default?