So true. Is it me, or was the biggest mistake simply not asking people to pay for something you can do manually in the beginning? I know creating a marketplace

So true. Is it me, or was the biggest mistake simply not asking people to pay for something you can do manually in the beginning? I know creating a marketplace is the fantasy where the flywheel starts and you just collect checks. Until you see people shelling out real cash in real volumes (which you can take manually without anything more than a Stripe account) AND you have a deep understanding of the intricacies of that transaction, isn't it time to hold off building your marketplace? So many of the comments noted in the article boil down to "launch quickly." If you follow that mantra, you cannot spend a ton of money on marketing, developers, or swag. You just have to ask people for money. But, asking people for money and hearing no is an ego blow that no one wanting to build a marketplace can handle. Kudos to this person for writing up what they went through, that brutal honesty is powerful and real.