Around the time this article came out I was looking at business opportunities for some under-employed friends and it seemed like a cafe would be a good idea. We

Around the time this article came out I was looking at business opportunities for some under-employed friends and it seemed like a cafe would be a good idea. We knew the neighbourhoods where it would work, we knew people that were worth hiring, they all had restaurant experience, and as for the supplier side, that was never a problem. Once I started researching it wasn't hard to hit nightmare after nightmare story. You can do everything perfectly right and still bust out. You can do everything totally wrong and strike it rich. It's such a gamble you may as well take your money down to the casino and play roulette. Not starting a business like that was probably the best idea. For one, I still have those friends, and two, didn't end up bankrupting myself by stubbornly sticking it out, or getting destroyed when the landlord, smelling opportunity, starts jacking up the rent to the moon. We have it so easy in the tech biz. You can compete with everyone in the world, and you can do it from anywhere in the world. Being nailed down to a physical location in a very specific niche is problematic if you're used to being able to operate nimbly, to jump from opportunity to opportunity.