> Doing them at the level of a service business like, say, a sandwich shop, is easy.
As someone who runs a service business, and who spends a lot of time working closely with a large number of people who also run service businesses ... I'd really like to know if your opinion here is based on any actual facts.
Traditional businesses have to deal with local ordinances and licenses, real estate, advertising & marketing, and one-on-one customer relations, all with higher expenses and lower potential revenues. They are wickedly susceptible to both local and national economic trends; when customers stop spending money or coming in the door, it's very, very hard to get them to come back. "Startup" businesses more often have these wonderful markets of millions of customers; if half of them walk away, you can still have a viable business.
And of course, startups have things like YCombinator (and TechStars, and...) that are putting a lot of effort into helping them be successful. Traditional businesses? Their best bet is their local SBA, and those guys are not helpful at all.
Hell, I just brought on another person to manage my service business so that I can begin to ease out of the nightmare of running that thing and slip into the wonderful world of coding all day.
As someone who runs a service business, and who spends a lot of time working closely with a large number of people who also run service businesses ... I'd really like to know if your opinion here is based on any actual facts.
Traditional businesses have to deal with local ordinances and licenses, real estate, advertising & marketing, and one-on-one customer relations, all with higher expenses and lower potential revenues. They are wickedly susceptible to both local and national economic trends; when customers stop spending money or coming in the door, it's very, very hard to get them to come back. "Startup" businesses more often have these wonderful markets of millions of customers; if half of them walk away, you can still have a viable business.
And of course, startups have things like YCombinator (and TechStars, and...) that are putting a lot of effort into helping them be successful. Traditional businesses? Their best bet is their local SBA, and those guys are not helpful at all.
Hell, I just brought on another person to manage my service business so that I can begin to ease out of the nightmare of running that thing and slip into the wonderful world of coding all day.