

Ask HN: can we assemble a business from components yet? - 6ren

In the old days, it seemed that every company wrote their own inventory control system, accounting system etc in-house, to cope with their specific business: their processes, their data etc.<p>Then, companies began to customize solutions, such as SAP.<p>Now, it seems that many webapp companies can get started by stitching together services, for the generic business stuff - things like payments, user-interface forms, forums etc. Note: I don't mean assembling the <i>product</i> (or service) - what the business actually does to create value - but all the standard generic "business" stuff.<p>How easy is it to assemble these services?  Is there quite a bit of work in the actual stitching together (gluing/interoperating), or is that pretty straightforward? Are there gaps in what services you need, that you'd think really should be generic?<p>In the bigger picture, if we truly are at the point of plug-and-play business-creation, it would enable an even greater explosion in businesses exploring niches to fill, how to reach customers, and experimenting with different ways to solve each of the "real" problems.
======
anamax
Vizio (flat screen tvs) had $2B in sales with only 80 employees, most of whom
are doing tech support. <http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070601/hidi-wang.html>

They contract-out manufacture. I suspect that they contract-out design as
well.

------
tst
There's a really good book about this (sadly only in German). However, the
author[1] writes about his first business which was basically a mail order
company for Darjeeling tea. He imports the tea, a company packs and ships it.
Almost all other parts (accounting, customer service, etc.) are also
outsourced. In 2005, the company had a sales volume of about $10m.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Faltin>

