Startup idea, which stack is right for you?

Question

Startups

Hi all.
There was an idea of ​​a startup, I want to listen to the opinion of the people, maybe some tips, excuses.
In general, what if we make a web application for the digitalization of retail outlets.
About 3 months ago I moved to another area of ​​the city and only now accidentally found out about several small shops, and there are plenty of such points that have been working for a couple of months and are closing or have recently opened. And now the subject - you may have heard about applications like Edadil for searching for discounts, so what if you make a kind of Shopify or Amazon for small businesses, plus fasten the search for discounts.
Here the trick will be that the owner does not need to do anything, he opens the application and takes a picture of the counter with price tags in the morning, for example, or when the prices change, then the application itself enters new data into the database. And clients have search with any filters.
For points + clientele, - you need to update prices.
For people + a way to find a product cheaper, closer to home or more unique.
- go to the site, check.
Although in the same Google maps people rate institutions, it means they check Google maps.
About the stack.
I tried the tutorial to make hello world on zend 2 and RoR 6 and run on heroku.
With RoR, development will go faster in my opinion - a lot of gems, the bundle is very convenient, there were problems with webpack, really. On the other hand, if something non-trivial is necessary - it seems like the Russian-speaking community is larger in PHP and it allows you to write more crutches.
What do you think about the stack?
Recognition of photos of prices from the counters seems to be a killer feature, so that the owners of the point would have no tension. Is it possible to capture a camera from a browser, and recognition in Python? There seems to be a lot of libraries for this.
If this will load the server too much, then what are the other options? Native application on the client? And what is the best stack for rapid prototyping and making changes?
I'm glad for any feedback, maybe someone has experience or this has already been done somewhere.

Answer 1

the owner does not have to do anything, he opens the application and takes a picture of the counter with price tags

So nothing or still needed)
the problem here is precisely in this very “digitalization” that people don’t have in their heads, and not in the fact that no one has come up with such a service yet.
In all maps, adding a point is a matter of one day. In Google maps, there is also a whole section with a menu (read as a price list), in Yandex maps there is also a section for filling in the price list.
Only all the owners don't give a shit, except for Votsap/VKontakte and classmates, they haven't seen the Internet.
And why do they need your application if everyone will go to them from nearby houses, and everyone who is further is not their audience by definition.
Plus, it turns out a typical marketplace where you need twice as much marketing and work to process the owners and end customers so that they learn about the application and start using it.
Then comes the actual problem of "opening new businesses every month" in the same place. Who will update it? Again, either people who need to be forced to somehow note that the outlet has already closed, or the new owner of the outlet must confirm that he is now here and gain access to data management in order to fill in new ones. And if there is no new owner yet, and if the new one is not aware of your application, etc.
At the output, there are a lot of dead spots that no one except you is going to update.
In general, all problems are from people one way or another. And either you will fill in all this yourself (2GIS, for example, collects everything by itself), or there will be an archive of small-town closed points.
everything that is mentioned one way or another is in Google / Yandex. And there it is not necessary to be the owner even to add a new point to the map, but who needs it?
Google generally has a global program of contributors / "local experts" where they are kicked in every possible way and forced to fill out cards for achievements . And it works for Google only because you can imagine what audience Google has. Again, where no one needs it, Google maps are also empty.

Answer 2

Another Ulyanov-Lenin who thinks that communism will save the world. Won't save. I'll tell you a secret - business often benefits from the fact that people cannot monitor all the prices in the city on one site. Fedya doesn't need grannies to know that Vasya's potatoes are cheaper by 3 rubles, because grannies will go to Vasya's, even through the whole city, and won't buy from Fedya within walking distance.

For people + a way to find a product cheaper, closer to home or more unique.

- A plus for people and a huge minus for a businessman.
Understand, when you do well to one side, the other side usually becomes bad (you have to lose customers, pay commissions, etc.). Therefore, social communism is impossible in commerce.
I somehow downloaded Edadil, and then deleted it, because I really don’t care about discounts if I can buy more expensive but at home than to monitor, track and generally bother with something there. Sometimes comfort is worth the extra money spent.

Answer 3

Technical plug:
))) The owner will just have to manually enter prices for 100,000 of his goods .... in order to correctly enter the price tags into the database from the photo, you need AI, most likely outside your budget.
Human plug: fuck no one needs this.
Financial plug: Who will pay for a trite hosting?

Answer 4

the owner does not have to do anything, he opens the application and takes a picture of the counter with price tags

That is, it is necessary. The question immediately arises - "what the hell is this to me"? All the same, only residents of the surrounding houses know about the local niche store, and they mostly go to it. It’s hard for me to imagine that I will travel a considerable distance for the sake of a discount of three rubles on a loaf of bread. (I don’t like small shops at all - they usually have some kind of scoop, often they don’t accept cards, I usually buy in a large network or go to a supermarket that I have on the ground floor of my house, if I’m really lazy - the prices there are really so-so ).
That is:
- the owner does not need it - if his business has taken off, he already has regular customers, if not - he is not up to you
- the client does not need this - he will still go either to the nearest one, or to where he found the best prices without you (I say, as a person around whose house there are four stores of four different chains at different distances)

Answer 5

why complicate your life with rails and heroes if php mysql on shared hosting can handle it.
The main problem is promotion and not a stack of technologies