[idopmstuff]

I think this really is the most important point. They could've figured this out in a much lower-budget way by having conversations before investing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pitching these business owners before making the app (or with a much lighter-weight version like a Shopify store) was clearly the right move, but you've got a founder who didn't want to sell (which is maybe as big of a hurdle as the saturated market).

And now that I think about it, I would bet they could've gotten 95+% of the functionality they needed with a Shopify store that cost a few hundred bucks per month and maybe some overseas VAs.