I spent a year with a friend trying to figure this problem out. We created a real-time Craigslist, allowing communications over SMS, XMPP, email and voice, and hooking up buyer and sellers to talk to each other based on best match of keyword, price, location. We only allowed a handful of friends to use the service for our own testing.
The only real options we came up with were:
- charge sellers enough to compensate for all of the SMS traffic
- only allow SMS on paid accounts (still doesn't solve the problem of being charged for all incoming SMS, whether you respond to the SMS or not)
- find investors
The route we took was to convert it to a product targeted at businesses.
I would imagine it is a talent acquisition. Autodesk has been trying to hire for a new cloud team in Detroit and San Francisco for a while...without luck, I think. (I was a reject)
The only real options we came up with were:
- charge sellers enough to compensate for all of the SMS traffic
- only allow SMS on paid accounts (still doesn't solve the problem of being charged for all incoming SMS, whether you respond to the SMS or not)
- find investors
The route we took was to convert it to a product targeted at businesses.