HN Explorer

I wanna develop a marketplace platform

3 points by changer1 ↗ HN
The question is this: I wanna develop a marketplace platform but i don't have technical background. I think I am pretty smart but not sure that smart enough to learn the process quickly and develop the platform myself. At the same time, I feel like it doesn't need that much know how to develop a MVP. If I find a technical co-founder to develop the platform and lose half of the company i am going to feel pretty bad. So what should I do?

24 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 61.1 ms ] thread
mtmail
At this stage you have an idea, not a company. You could pay market salary to a developer or agency, then you'd still own 100%.
changer1
All the people I talked with told me not to outsource the business from the beginning. And i don't have the resources to found a company and hire people. Actually im new here so i couldn't explain myself well. The thing is my mind is can learn JavaScript just enough to develop a MVP in one month?
mtmail
I think you underestimate the task. Coding bootcamps (e.g. https://flatironschool.com/courses/coding-bootcamp/) go for several months full-time with a tutor.
changer1
i know it sounds like that i wanna the easy way out but i feel like that thats the only way. and you described my problem perfectly. i don't know the scale of this process and the skillset that i need to have. how can I create the frame in my mind?
sfmz
Maybe somebody has already written what you are looking for and you can just buy a license and deploy it. Learning front-end, database, dev-ops, payments, css in one month is not possible, maybe you can have a baseline of those skills in 3 years if you put in good effort.
changer1
when i checked the market i couldn't find something similar to my idea. for the second part, the idea i have looks simple to me. its MVP version doesn't have a database and payment system. simple css -i don't want to underestimate but i feel like the level of css i need can be provided by chatgpt - , and a pretty simple user interface. the main structure behind is going to act like a messaging app. and i think the technical know how from the internet would make it easier too. what would you say for that type of project?
sfmz
Messaging apps need databases to store messages, they also need authentication.

I read below you want to make a food delivery app. If we are actually talking about restaurant delivery and not illicit drugs -- you need the delivery people to have an app that sends you their location, a routing algorithm to choose the closest person to send, logins, payment processing, etc. etc.

Its a major major undertaking that would cost at least $10m if done from scratch.

changer1
i live in turkey and the restaurants here operate with their own delivery people. for the MVP version, it will be operating with only cash option. i have a growth plan in my head. i think i don't need a really functioning platform, revenue or customers to start the plan. all i need a draft-MVP kind of stuff. Is this going to be that expensive?
sfmz
A possible route is build a website that takes the order and sends an email to the restaurant (with the order).

This model has issues though, because you are not handling money, therefore you're not getting paid.

changer1
yeah im thinking something like that actually but little different. im going to charge the restaurants monthly as a subscription model. the delivery apps i know charge by the percentage. so the difference between me and them is going to be this. while other delivery apps charge %10 of the order, i am going to charge 100$ monthly. fixed expense means 0 in long term. with that i am going to be able to cut down the prices. the plan is this. Is this still hard to develop? Btw my goal is not going to be only cash. i want to keep the MVP version as simple as possible. I have plans for payment methods too.
sfmz
Its a simple business model, but its fundamentally not a simple app to build.

Lists of restaurants with lists of menu items and prices, add to shopping cart, enter address, verify address, send email, retain order in database, process payment, user-authentication to remember past orders, make look good on mobile app and desktop. I'm probably forgetting some things.

You don't want to build this, you want someone else to have already built it

https://www.capterra.com/resources/free-online-food-ordering...

gjvc
what is a "marketplace platform" ?
changer1
food delivery app. i need people to create accounts, login, restaurants to do the same thing and linking them thru my system.
gjvc
just checking
6510
I think it depends on the size of the audience. With hundreds or a few thousand of visitors per day some sloppy slapped together website on some crappy host would work just fine. Strip it down to the bare minimum features and get someone to put a price on it. Or not even that...

<unpopular opinion> Building the community is the hardest most important part. If you can find enough people to submit and buy things it becomes worth a visit for the rest of the audience. If they are reasonably competent you can do that with a blog engine or forum software.

When it gets worth building a custom website you might have some issues migrating.

If you have all kinds of special features in mind the 50/50 deal is a good choice.

changer1
i totally agree in the audiance part. im in one of the top universities in my country and i believe i could use the community of the uni to get to a thousand users after i deploy. the thing is: i feel like the idea in my mind is not that complex -at least the MVP version - and if i give someone 50 percent its going to make me ripped of. i need someone to draw the frame in my head in order to understand the scale of the thing i wanna build.
6510
It is a lot of work to code and maintain. I don't know what other work is involved. What kind of expertise do you bring to the company? What would your work week look like if everything is up and running?
changer1
i feel like i can make connections to make it grow really fast. and i know that sounds cocky but i think im pretty smart and i contribute a vision here. and probably im really underestimating the skillset to code the platform but i really wanna understand the structure behind and effort and knowledge needed but it still seems like a not huge job. what do you say?
Jugurtha
Marketplaces are, by definition, multi-sided. This is why they are notoriously hard to start but, also, notoriously defensible. The risk is less technical than it is to get the n-sides into the marketplace, for an arbitrary form of the marketplace.

Therefore, what is the form of the marketplace you can deliver now to validate your idea? In other words: can it be a spread-sheet, Facebook group, online directory, Telegram space, etc... that take the tech out of the equation and that help you create the "marketplace", and then you can port that into your preferred form, informed by the knowledge you acquire running the proto-marketplace?

changer1
i totally understand your advise. i want to build a food delivery app. the most simple way i can imagine is this: user signup and login might not be neccessary because people won't need it. i just need restaurants to list their menu and people to transmit their order to restaurant. probably i am going to need some kind of authentication. but at first im going to be operating with only cash.
6510
I thought about it and the minimum viable product is much simpler than you think.

What you want is a static website with all the menus on it.

Just a dumb HTML page would already be enough.

You bill them for data entry, they give you their delivery menu.

You type the entire menu into your webpage. One under the other.

Then you charge them 20 euro per month minimum fee. The restaurants are sorted (by hand) every month by how much they've paid.

The fee has to be that small to force all restaurants to participate.

sfont
How are the orders getting to the restaurants? Early versions of this concept would fax them. Having a fax machine is no longer common. You also can’t expect to rely on the supplier (restaurant) proactively doing something such as checking an email or logging in to a webpage…
6510
They are already taking orders by phone. In my opinion there is no urgency to replace this.

The question to ask is what you can do for the customer. Bringing all the menu cards together in the same format adds value.

You don't even need a search engine.

First upgrade agenda point for automation would be a restaurant login so that they can save money by doing the menu data entry themselves.

edit:

The guy cant code, all the value will have to come from him promoting the website.

changer1
i wasn't able to think that simpler. the idea is exactly this. but how can i build it? i want to remove the third party delivery apps. im going to connect customers directly to restaurants. your recommendation sounds similar to early doordash. my concern here is about the customer type. back in those days people could ameteur looking products but i feel like its impossible. instead of giving their phone number, i wanna create a simple system that similar to other food delivery apps.it is going to take your personal information - phone number, name, adress- and your order, deliver it to the restaurant as a message and display the order to the restaurant as a panel. is that sounds ok?