if they were online businesses, maybe it would only be modestly expensive and take 3-5 years to scale... but the market is LOTS of OFFLINE and SMALL businesses, which will take for-fking-EVER to scale organically.

thus, you either need to a) already have lots of users (FB,GOOG,AAPL,TWTR) to motivate businesses to participate, or b) you need to have enough cash to pay them to do so.

ergo, shitload of capital rqd, and/or get bought by bigger player who has users, cash, or both.