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Doomed? Seriously, new companies that don't have something substantively different about them don't have good odds. In brick-and-motar that "something differen
by nknight 15y ago
Doomed?
Seriously, new companies that don't have something substantively different about them don't have good odds. In brick-and-motar that "something different" might just be geographic location (e.g. a car mechanic in a town that doesn't have one), but in the online world, you usually need something more.
The "somethings different" can be only slight changes to the models (better customer service, better support for language X, etc.), but they're always different in some way.
"Startup" can imply something radically different, but it doesn't have to, and in any case, even companies that _try_ to stick to an existing business model rarely do, and the plans always change and adjust as you go along, it doesn't matter what kind of business you're in.
- seats 15y agoThen perhaps we agree at the margins. It all depends on what you consider to be a 'slight change' in the model. We also probably disagree slightly on what businesses you are willing to claim as startups. Is a new restaurant a startup? How about a consignment store? A dev consulting shop? Even in the most commoditized industries with extreme competition, there is often a built in profit margin that is essentially accepted by the businesses in that industry, because it would be mutually destructive for it disappear entirely. I'd wager that most of the small business economic activity in the US comes from sole proprietors repeating business models verbatim and collecting that additional margin above and beyond their built in salary expense.