

Have you launched a non-unique business? Tell us about your experience - kingnothing

Lately I've been thinking about launching businesses that aren't anything special in their own right and that don't require some kind of eureka moment to discover the concept. Clearly that's nothing new: people have been running bars, restaurants, movie theaters, and mattress stores for decades and each iteration doesn't typically bring any major new improvement along with it.<p>Do any of you have experience starting and running a business that isn't necessarily the next big thing? Software based or not, I'm interested to learn about your experience. What was the business? What was good and bad about it? Why and how did you succeed or fail?<p>I'm personally more interested in software startups, but I believe you can learn something from anything, so please share away!
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abalashov
I don't know that this is the right way to frame the question, at least in my
experience.

98% of making serious money in any business still has to do with good
execution and process - it's ultimately about creating reusable business
processes that can be replicated at decreasing marginal cost. That's going to
be true whether you're a mattress store or a "next big thing" software concept
startup. So, they have at least that in common.

Otherwise, more generally, there's the kind of banality you ascribe to bars,
restaurants, movie theaters, etc. in every business, even a technology startup
--and lots of it. If you're doing something you genuinely enjoy, that just
means you're lucky enough that your drudgery/fun mix is something like
90%/10%, instead of the 98%/2% that applies to people who claim to outright to
hate their work.

At the same time, there's both room and ample incentive for differentiation
through aggressive innovation and novel concepts in these types of everyday
businesses, too. So, just because they aren't hot Silicon Valley startups
doesn't mean they neither benefit from nor require the same kinds of
marketing, branding, advertising, sales cycle and operational challenges.

