My wife and I worked on our geo forum together, and it worked great for us. The only problem was C-19 and the government mandates. Running the geo-forum that promoted going out while there were "please stay at home" orders (they couldn't force you, but Japanese are compliant), would leave an ever-lasting bad impression if it were left open throughout the pandemic. This would've most likely impacted our ability to secure funding to expand and hire out to grow faster, as I would be borrowing on the Japanese side, for a website that promotes tourism.
A lot of the content still remains good, but it does need to be scrubbed because I'd venture to say that the pandemic cost 1/2 the business directory listings to be permanently closed.
