The hard part in building a two-sided market is getting users AND buyers on your platform. This generally means epic shit-tons of brand marketing to end users, which is where a lot of those millions of VC dollars go. There&#x27;s really no way to get brand recognition otherwise -- you have to spend some ad dollars to inform users of your product. Ad spend is a zero-sum game from a competitive lens, so if your competitors are out-advertising you, they&#x27;re going to win. And yes, this is why companies tackling two-sided markets focus on user acquisition over profitability.<p>You were also trying to fix the wrong problem. Focusing on the user experience is the right call, but your mistake was saying &quot;fuck this, the distributor model is so fucked we can&#x27;t do it&quot;. Ok, if the supply chain of a specific industry is super-expensive, your business model should be to streamline it by going direct and undercutting everyone else (this is what Uber did).<p>You needed to build a new distribution model. It&#x27;s fair to say &quot;I&#x27;m a college student and don&#x27;t have time to fix this big problem&quot; -- which is fair, supply chain problems like this are usually best left to people with experience in them or at least a passion for solving them.