I totally agree you have to differentiate and avoid replication as much as you can as a startup in general, but this conversation is mixing awkwardly two discussions now.
In context I was pushing back on the idea that cloning it to any competitive degree isn’t a mountain of a task.
But out of context of this thread, then yes as a startup your strategy should involve simpler, novel features that let you avoid some work. Of course if you're aiming to replace Yelp eventually, you do have to do that hard work and I doubt you'll really get far without doing it ultimately. Ratings/search is the product. You can simplify it in other ways though.
