This was the death spiral. Houzz let homeowners find contractors and see reviews. Apex had a list of 350 local pros—plumbers, electricians, painters. Most hadn't updated their profile since 2019. Leo built a simple directory: name, phone, star rating. But Marcus insisted on a "verification badge" (a little green checkmark) for pros who paid a $99 monthly fee.
"Why?" Leo asked.
"No." Marcus slammed his laptop shut. "You told me this would be a clone. This is a corpse wearing Houzz’s skin." houzz clone
Leo wanted to say, You paid for a tricycle and asked for a Ferrari, but instead said, "We can iterate." This was the death spiral
Houzz’s killer feature was the ability to "clip" any photo from anywhere on the site into a user’s personal folder. Leo tried to implement it using a library called dragula . It worked on desktop. On mobile, every photo turned into a screaming gray box. Mira spent three days rebuilding the drag-and-drop from scratch, muttering, "Why didn't we just use Firebase storage and call it a day?" Most hadn't updated their profile since 2019