15 ms·

Ask HN: What's the best business to start in 2022?

I'm tired of being an employee. What's the best business to start ion 2022?

mandmandam 4y ago
The best jobs for society seem to be the worst appreciated and compensated. Corporate tax accountants "earn" orders of magnitude more than janitors and nurses. Media puppets earn far far more than investigative journalists. Lawyers are respected more than teachers, in many ways. It's all absolutely batty. That said, seems to me the best compensated people, with the least friction in their career, and with the least amount of overt evil done to society seem to be consultants. If you can start a consulting business in some field you can probably do well, financially at least. I am not a consultant. From here though, it seems like they get paid astoundingly well by large companies that have no real way to measure the outcomes, so you just have to be confident and chipper and give people the feeling that you know what you're talking about and can help them. Good luck!
- itake 4y ago
  > with the least amount of overt evil done to society Debatable. My friends at BCG have a HUGE carbon footprint as they fly around the world to site offices every week.
- jd_illa 4y ago
  my partner was a consultant at Bain and regularly worked 100+ hour weeks in a small town outside of Dallas where he ate all his meals at a hotel. The day he left was one of the best of his life! It's a definitely a lot more than being confident. There's a ton of important data skills, people management and strategy skills involved, and a lot of times your "clients" are not on your side. It's pretty common for a CEO or department head to hire a consultant to work with a department that's not doing well, so the folks you actually end up working with can resent you (especially when they know how much you're getting paid).
  - As_You_Wish 4y ago
    Bain is different than what he is talking about. You are an employee at a services company. It's like being a lawyer or an accountant. You have to maximize the hours you work because the money goes to Bain so they work you to death for their money. If you work for yourself, you are your own boss and can work how you want. I know great companies that do work in the industry. I talk to business owners, find what they want and need, do an analysis, and then get the companies that I work with to come in and do the actual work. I do the upfront work for free and then collect a cut of the work done by the companies that do the work. Maybe I'm a salesperson, maybe I'm a consultant. I call myself a consultant, I guess, since I do the analysis report and bring in the solution?
- jesterson 4y ago
  > Lawyers are respected more than teachers, in many ways. Wonder what those ways are - in my environment (and it's very business oriented, very far from teaching), teachers are respected way more than lawyers. Yea, lawyers make more cash, but it's totally different story and has nothing to do with respect.
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    The cash is a big, big deal. And it comes with benefits like having more time off, better health care, a higher quality of life. Cash is intimately linked; highly, highly correlated with respect from strangers. You can't ignore it. Lawyers can afford better clothes, giving them instantly more respect from strangers. They eat at more expensive restaurants, shop at higher class shops, fly in a better class. Their respect might be shallow and paid for, but again, let's not ignore it. Now think of two generic families - one has a kid who just graduated law school, one has a kid who just graduated teacher's college. I don't think the teacher's family would be significantly more proud, in shallow terms. Probably the opposite, and that's sad af. Think of what happens when a cop stops a teacher, compared to when they stop a lawyer - who are they more scared of overreaching with? In many situations, the lawyer has more connections, and more capability in many ways to inflict consequences on people who mess with them. I've heard many times that teachers are overpaid - seriously, I have. People complain that their job is too fulfilling (which is insane, for sure, but I do hear it). People are envious of the three month "holiday" every year, ignorant of all that needs to be done in that time. I'm neither a teacher or a lawyer, but I know many teachers who deserve far better lives, and many lawyers who deserve far, far less.
    - jesterson 4y ago
      It may be a cultural thing, but it does seem to me you use prosperity and respect as interchangeable terms, while they are not. If police guy stops a lawyer he indeed wouldn't possibly mess with him but certainly not because of respect, quite the opposite. The is russian saying which can be translated as "don't touch shit - it won't smell". I personally don't have respect to someone just because they have 7 digits in bank account or huge villa in LA/SF. Or went to Cornell/Harvard - thanks to life experiences I've seen a lot of graduates from both institutions who were dumb af. That just doesn't make any sense. Again, it may be a cultural thing, but respect is something achieved by someone's actions, not assets. I know few people (sadly very few) who sacrificed their wealth for a more meaningful things in life. Their assets are next to nothing, yet respect to them is tremendous. Saying teachers are overpaid is ridiculous though. Wonder if people who say that send their kids to public schools.
JohnFen 4y ago
The best business to start is one that really excites you. Starting a business is a serious life commitment, and you will be doing little but working on it. It has to be something inherently rewarding to you.
- Olumde 4y ago
  True, but someone has got to be willing to pay for what you do.
  - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
    There's a "Purpose" venn diagram for this http://www.humanbusiness.eu/purpose-venn-diagram/ http://www.humanbusiness.eu/purpose-venn-diagram/
    - stocknoob 4y ago
      It’s too hard to solve 4 constraints simultaneously. Get financial independence (with any reasonably paying job), then you can solve the remaining constraints without always looking over your shoulder whether the world still wants to pay you.
    - paraknight 4y ago
      That Venn diagram is a bastardisation of Ikigai https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai. If you search that word on Google Images, you'll see the same diagram, but it's a departure from the concept, made for self-help content. I recommend looking into the origins of you're interested in it.
    - speedgoose 4y ago
      Most scientific researchers fit exactly in the middle.
- As_You_Wish 4y ago
  Making money excites me. I don't really care too much about what it is, I find that as I earn more and more money, the business starts to excite me more and more. I'll sell potatoes if I make millions, I'll sell my used underwear if it makes millions. I don't want to do something that I hate, but I'll be ok if it is "average" interest. Plus, nothing excites me...so what do I do? Well, sleeping all day every day is exciting, but I don't think anyone would pay me for that, damn it. Not working at all excites me. Does someone want to hire me for not working? If I start my own company, does anyone want to pay me for sending me money and getting nothing in return? Because as I think about it, that is what is starting to get me more and more excited. Also, I think about all the people who work in jobs that they hate, just to make money. One woman I know, she works 2 jobs, 8 hours each, every day. She has 5 children she supports. She used to didn't work but 3 years ago, her husband, who was the main earner, died. She is now working minimum wage jobs, at $15/hour, struggling. One does what one has to do, even if they hate it for a long time. I kind of get sick of the whole "Do what you love otherwise you can't work" mindset. It's kind of arrogant... you have to be happy working, but others still go out every day, to jobs they hate, and somehow keep doing it every day. But, you will quit if you don't LOVE what you're doing. Crazy thought process, as I see it. Arrogant. I mean, guess it's great that you are a Stanford or Harvard MBA and only have to do what makes you happy, otherwise...well, there is no otherwise. I must be happy, nothing else will suffice, right?
dangus 4y ago
In my opinion, if you are engaging in the brainstorming method of saying "I want to start a business," that will never get you anywhere. Starting a business is about seeing a problem, solution, and/or opportunity, and being able to execute it with domain expertise, all at the right time. Of course, it's also about grinding out sales leads and finding paying customers – a lot of is is sinking way more hours into it than you would sink into a 9 to 5. I don't think this process is successful very often when we use the "daydreaming" method encompassed in the way your question is phrased here. There aren't a lot of ways to "quit my job real quick." Most businesses are going to involve way more work than a day job, and the ideas can't just come out of thin air or from strangers on the Internet. Frankly, my advice to someone daydreaming is to just look around for more fulfilling salaried work.
- As_You_Wish 4y ago
  eh, I don't think so. I've seen lots of problems with solutions but nobody wants to buy. I've seen someone pick up tumbleweek from their backyard and open an online store and make tens of thousands in a week of opening, and millions a year, selling a product they don't pay for, and it takes minimal work. I think there's a lot of pure luck in being successful, at all levels. A lot of successful people chalk it up to pure luck and it is not false humility, either. Had Bill Gates been born 3 years later, or had his parents not sent him to his exclusive high school and he had no access to computers...so many little things can derail stuff.
- trhoad 4y ago
  This isn't true. Many successful, profitable businesses were started by just surveying the landscape and being better/different to something pre-existing.
  - dangus 4y ago
    I think the process you're describing is a lot more targeted and. methodical than the vague question of "what business should I start?" The person who comes forward with prompts like "I'm a full stack developer, what problems do you think I could solve with software?" or "I work in hospitality, what's on your wish list for when you go out to eat/stay at a hotel?" that's going to produce a lot more useful feedback. When one asks "what business should I start? I want to quit my job" it comes across to me as "Work bad, how do I plant a money tree in my backyard?"
cicce19 4y ago
Best way to come up with s startup idea: don't think about startup ideas. Read some PG essays.
- mod 4y ago
  Not everything is a startup (like I think you mean). Maybe 2022 is a great time to open a liquor store.
- roflyear 4y ago
  Everyone should take PGs advice with as worth as much as they are paying for it.
muzani 4y ago
What makes you tired of being an employee though? Entrepreneurship is more "honest". You'll get compensated based on your competence and results. If you go around asking, "What's the best business to start," are you really qualified for this line of work? Especially when the primary skill is finding product-market fit. You still have to justify shit to people - the customers, the investors, the tax people. You're still powerless, subject to the whims of regulations and unstable partners. You can quit one bad job after another, but you're stuck with a company you own, especially if you have relatives who have invested in it and staff who are relying on you to pay rent.

I'm tired of being an employee. What's the best business to start ion 2022?

The best jobs for society seem to be the worst appreciated and compensated. Corporate tax accountants "earn" orders of magnitude more than janitors and nurses. Media puppets earn far far more than investigative journalists. Lawyers are respected more than teachers, in many ways. It's all absolutely batty. That said, seems to me the best compensated people, with the least friction in their career, and with the least amount of overt evil done to society seem to be consultants. If you can start a consulting business in some field you can probably do well, financially at least. I am not a consultant. From here though, it seems like they get paid astoundingly well by large companies that have no real way to measure the outcomes, so you just have to be confident and chipper and give people the feeling that you know what you're talking about and can help them. Good luck!

itake 4y ago
> with the least amount of overt evil done to society Debatable. My friends at BCG have a HUGE carbon footprint as they fly around the world to site offices every week.
jd_illa 4y ago
my partner was a consultant at Bain and regularly worked 100+ hour weeks in a small town outside of Dallas where he ate all his meals at a hotel. The day he left was one of the best of his life! It's a definitely a lot more than being confident. There's a ton of important data skills, people management and strategy skills involved, and a lot of times your "clients" are not on your side. It's pretty common for a CEO or department head to hire a consultant to work with a department that's not doing well, so the folks you actually end up working with can resent you (especially when they know how much you're getting paid).
- As_You_Wish 4y ago
  Bain is different than what he is talking about. You are an employee at a services company. It's like being a lawyer or an accountant. You have to maximize the hours you work because the money goes to Bain so they work you to death for their money. If you work for yourself, you are your own boss and can work how you want. I know great companies that do work in the industry. I talk to business owners, find what they want and need, do an analysis, and then get the companies that I work with to come in and do the actual work. I do the upfront work for free and then collect a cut of the work done by the companies that do the work. Maybe I'm a salesperson, maybe I'm a consultant. I call myself a consultant, I guess, since I do the analysis report and bring in the solution?
jesterson 4y ago
> Lawyers are respected more than teachers, in many ways. Wonder what those ways are - in my environment (and it's very business oriented, very far from teaching), teachers are respected way more than lawyers. Yea, lawyers make more cash, but it's totally different story and has nothing to do with respect.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  The cash is a big, big deal. And it comes with benefits like having more time off, better health care, a higher quality of life. Cash is intimately linked; highly, highly correlated with respect from strangers. You can't ignore it. Lawyers can afford better clothes, giving them instantly more respect from strangers. They eat at more expensive restaurants, shop at higher class shops, fly in a better class. Their respect might be shallow and paid for, but again, let's not ignore it. Now think of two generic families - one has a kid who just graduated law school, one has a kid who just graduated teacher's college. I don't think the teacher's family would be significantly more proud, in shallow terms. Probably the opposite, and that's sad af. Think of what happens when a cop stops a teacher, compared to when they stop a lawyer - who are they more scared of overreaching with? In many situations, the lawyer has more connections, and more capability in many ways to inflict consequences on people who mess with them. I've heard many times that teachers are overpaid - seriously, I have. People complain that their job is too fulfilling (which is insane, for sure, but I do hear it). People are envious of the three month "holiday" every year, ignorant of all that needs to be done in that time. I'm neither a teacher or a lawyer, but I know many teachers who deserve far better lives, and many lawyers who deserve far, far less.
  - jesterson 4y ago
    It may be a cultural thing, but it does seem to me you use prosperity and respect as interchangeable terms, while they are not. If police guy stops a lawyer he indeed wouldn't possibly mess with him but certainly not because of respect, quite the opposite. The is russian saying which can be translated as "don't touch shit - it won't smell". I personally don't have respect to someone just because they have 7 digits in bank account or huge villa in LA/SF. Or went to Cornell/Harvard - thanks to life experiences I've seen a lot of graduates from both institutions who were dumb af. That just doesn't make any sense. Again, it may be a cultural thing, but respect is something achieved by someone's actions, not assets. I know few people (sadly very few) who sacrificed their wealth for a more meaningful things in life. Their assets are next to nothing, yet respect to them is tremendous. Saying teachers are overpaid is ridiculous though. Wonder if people who say that send their kids to public schools.

JohnFen 4y ago

The best business to start is one that really excites you. Starting a business is a serious life commitment, and you will be doing little but working on it. It has to be something inherently rewarding to you.

Olumde 4y ago
True, but someone has got to be willing to pay for what you do.
- AndrewKemendo 4y ago
  There's a "Purpose" venn diagram for this http://www.humanbusiness.eu/purpose-venn-diagram/ http://www.humanbusiness.eu/purpose-venn-diagram/
  - stocknoob 4y ago
    It’s too hard to solve 4 constraints simultaneously. Get financial independence (with any reasonably paying job), then you can solve the remaining constraints without always looking over your shoulder whether the world still wants to pay you.
  - paraknight 4y ago
    That Venn diagram is a bastardisation of Ikigai https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai. If you search that word on Google Images, you'll see the same diagram, but it's a departure from the concept, made for self-help content. I recommend looking into the origins of you're interested in it.
  - speedgoose 4y ago
    Most scientific researchers fit exactly in the middle.
As_You_Wish 4y ago
Making money excites me. I don't really care too much about what it is, I find that as I earn more and more money, the business starts to excite me more and more. I'll sell potatoes if I make millions, I'll sell my used underwear if it makes millions. I don't want to do something that I hate, but I'll be ok if it is "average" interest. Plus, nothing excites me...so what do I do? Well, sleeping all day every day is exciting, but I don't think anyone would pay me for that, damn it. Not working at all excites me. Does someone want to hire me for not working? If I start my own company, does anyone want to pay me for sending me money and getting nothing in return? Because as I think about it, that is what is starting to get me more and more excited. Also, I think about all the people who work in jobs that they hate, just to make money. One woman I know, she works 2 jobs, 8 hours each, every day. She has 5 children she supports. She used to didn't work but 3 years ago, her husband, who was the main earner, died. She is now working minimum wage jobs, at $15/hour, struggling. One does what one has to do, even if they hate it for a long time. I kind of get sick of the whole "Do what you love otherwise you can't work" mindset. It's kind of arrogant... you have to be happy working, but others still go out every day, to jobs they hate, and somehow keep doing it every day. But, you will quit if you don't LOVE what you're doing. Crazy thought process, as I see it. Arrogant. I mean, guess it's great that you are a Stanford or Harvard MBA and only have to do what makes you happy, otherwise...well, there is no otherwise. I must be happy, nothing else will suffice, right?

dangus 4y ago

In my opinion, if you are engaging in the brainstorming method of saying "I want to start a business," that will never get you anywhere. Starting a business is about seeing a problem, solution, and/or opportunity, and being able to execute it with domain expertise, all at the right time. Of course, it's also about grinding out sales leads and finding paying customers – a lot of is is sinking way more hours into it than you would sink into a 9 to 5. I don't think this process is successful very often when we use the "daydreaming" method encompassed in the way your question is phrased here. There aren't a lot of ways to "quit my job real quick." Most businesses are going to involve way more work than a day job, and the ideas can't just come out of thin air or from strangers on the Internet. Frankly, my advice to someone daydreaming is to just look around for more fulfilling salaried work.

As_You_Wish 4y ago
eh, I don't think so. I've seen lots of problems with solutions but nobody wants to buy. I've seen someone pick up tumbleweek from their backyard and open an online store and make tens of thousands in a week of opening, and millions a year, selling a product they don't pay for, and it takes minimal work. I think there's a lot of pure luck in being successful, at all levels. A lot of successful people chalk it up to pure luck and it is not false humility, either. Had Bill Gates been born 3 years later, or had his parents not sent him to his exclusive high school and he had no access to computers...so many little things can derail stuff.
trhoad 4y ago
This isn't true. Many successful, profitable businesses were started by just surveying the landscape and being better/different to something pre-existing.
- dangus 4y ago
  I think the process you're describing is a lot more targeted and. methodical than the vague question of "what business should I start?" The person who comes forward with prompts like "I'm a full stack developer, what problems do you think I could solve with software?" or "I work in hospitality, what's on your wish list for when you go out to eat/stay at a hotel?" that's going to produce a lot more useful feedback. When one asks "what business should I start? I want to quit my job" it comes across to me as "Work bad, how do I plant a money tree in my backyard?"

cicce19 4y ago

Best way to come up with s startup idea: don't think about startup ideas. Read some PG essays.

mod 4y ago
Not everything is a startup (like I think you mean). Maybe 2022 is a great time to open a liquor store.
roflyear 4y ago
Everyone should take PGs advice with as worth as much as they are paying for it.

muzani 4y ago

What makes you tired of being an employee though? Entrepreneurship is more "honest". You'll get compensated based on your competence and results. If you go around asking, "What's the best business to start," are you really qualified for this line of work? Especially when the primary skill is finding product-market fit. You still have to justify shit to people - the customers, the investors, the tax people. You're still powerless, subject to the whims of regulations and unstable partners. You can quit one bad job after another, but you're stuck with a company you own, especially if you have relatives who have invested in it and staff who are relying on you to pay rent.