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This used to be my feeling too, but I changed my mind when I worked with a company doing just what you describe. They grew it to a 50-people company within 5 ye
by r2dnb 10y ago
This used to be my feeling too, but I changed my mind when I worked with a company doing just what you describe. They grew it to a 50-people company within 5 years. Initially I felt smarter than them and wondered how on earth they could have put all their eggs in the same basket in such a way.
Then I realized that with the money they had, they had been able to hire me to do this work, so perhaps I wasn't the smartest guy in the room after all...
The thing to understand is that capitalism is about identifying opportunities to accumulate the largest amount of capital in the shortest amount of time.
The truth is if you focus only on "logical", sustainable, defensible, infinitely scalable business models, you'll be missing out a good 60% of the opportunities.
If you could let's say accumulate $600,000 in 5 months with a non viable business, you'd have all the time in the world to work on the viable businesses you mention.
In capitalism, you rarely know for sure which game the other person is playing. It's not because she is moving cards around that she is playing cards.
So the bottom line of my comment is don't be too smart . Being able to make dumb money is as important - if not more important - than being able to make smart money.
And I can even say : making dumb money at the right time is more valuable than making smart money at the wrong time.
- shostack 10y agoFair enough on your main point. But I'll ask the obvious question... What stopped you or the other employees who understood how the business worked from sourcing the same or similar products and competing?
- r2dnb 10y agoI won't mention basic things like non-competition clauses, honesty etc... The majority of people are usually honest - especially those senior enough to be exposed to this kind of secrets / overview. But past that starting a business, especially a physical product one is not a trivial thing to do. You need to be very motivated. Like with software you discover many time-consuming details as you implement. And here not everything can be automated once solved. Even established competitors do not copy as fast as one may think because of these forces. It might be dumb money but it still isn't easy money - and that's what make it even dumber : why not invest the effort in something "better" someone will say.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ckib16 10y agoGreat point r2dnb. This used to be my mentality as well and it hurt me. I was looking for a "smart" business that was "worthy" of me. How could these people spend so much time on such an indefensible & unscalable process?! Well, the joke was on me. My brother stopped consuming info and started Amazon FBA. And he does really well (full-time job replacement). Instead of waiting for the perfect idea - he executed. Now I'm happily off my high horse and trying to follow in his footsteps. Lesson learned - there is no perfect business. Get started with something simple and build from there. Great article on this incremental approach for anyone interested: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-bootstrapping/ http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approa...