[x0x0]

re: #2

>[...] I feel like I could make these ideas work, but it's also super risky. I don't want to spend 1-2 years working on these ideas only to look up and realized I wasted my time and money.

If you can't get comfortable with that risk, you're going to have a very hard time being an entrepreneur.

There's always people who luck into an amazing business and business model, but realistically, you're going to have to put some resources in before you figure out if there's value. Even if it's just mocks and time spent talking to folks (do both those before coding anything though!)

Oh, and yelp is a terrible business -- the coding is straightforward. Your problem there is entirely how do you seed a site with reviews and businesses. Typically, two-sided marketplaces are some of the hardest businesses to create.

[driven20]

I totally agree with the risk comment.

Also, my idea is to onboard small businesses slowly. Maybe, adopting and building out features/tools for one business at a time. Until the project is more completed and I can focus on scaling the onboarding.

[x0x0]

The problem isn't onboarding. The problem is that without a pool of users, the site is worthless to businesses. The fundamental question you have to answer is -- assume you can friends and family a couple businesses, fine -- why does business 7 pay you money, or even do anything at all for you? Or business 8, or 9, or 10...

Small businesses are barraged with calls from vendors like you.

[Roybot]

Well it's not that black and white. Can op make the application/business appealing as a single sided marketplace to begin with? Maybe. If there is 1 side that can find value without having the other side onboard then there you go. Doesn't mean it's going to be easy. Still hard, but just address the challenges as they come.

op, take a couple months to build your product (considering this is a CRUD-like app) and then face the distribution problem.