

Ask HN: Web Startup versus Non-Web Startup - hammmatt

Since I have started visiting HN, I have seen many great reasons/examples for web startups.<p>However, I have come across some interesting examples of really cheap businesses to start that have very high returns by comparison.<p>Case in point, a business that I heard about while working an on-site job. One of the technicians cousins had started a business affectionately named, "Scoopy Doo." The cousin paid some workers around $10 an hour to go around the local area and pickup dog excrement from customers yards. He worked approximatively two weeks a year, filling in for when people couldn't work. He has no marketing campaign, very little overhead, and stores the waste on his farm (does not use additional products).<p>His business nets him $100,000 a year (confirmed), and his market is only a series of small towns in Northern Michigan.<p>It seems that while there is great value in making a startup on the internet, old fashion entrepreneurship can be more hands on but is still amazing profitable.<p>Web based companies can grow fast, have huge markets and can be started for very little.<p>If you truly put your mind to it, you could make a business with very little overhead, very little startup cost and very little micro-management outside of the web.<p>At the end of the day it is about the percentage return on investment, correct?<p>So I ask HN, why do we focus on web startups? Why not pay attention on all types of startups?<p>What about the gray areas in between? For example, creating your own hardware but selling different software for it online.
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matthewphiong
HN is build around the web startup community. So, almost all stuff you read
here geared towards web stuff.

> At the end of the day it is about the percentage return on investment,
> correct?

For me, at the end of the day it is about the satisfaction and happiness I get
from my startup. Money certainly matters but it's not primary for me. That
said, I'm not saying it's OK to do unprofitable startup. Put a balance to
that.

The bottom line is to look for what you're passionate about & what is
meaningful to you, whether it's web apps, software, selling stuff, etc and
make a startup out of it.

Guy Kawasaki once said: "It's been my observation that most companies founded
on this concept of making money pretty much fail. They attract the wrong kind
of co-founders and early employees. Entrepreneurs should focus on making their
product or service mean something beyond the sum of its components -- and the
money may very well follow"

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hartard
Clickable: <http://www.scoopydoo.com>

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il
I don't think this is a "review my startup" type post.

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grep
It's not so easy to earn money clean dog poop where you're not in the US.

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gregpilling
Hacker News is about web startups. PickDooUp News is about your friend's
startup.

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zeemonkee
That doesn't mean that there aren't valuable lessons to learn from non-web
startups. This is what I took away from the post:

1\. A small niche market can be profitable (maybe not Facebook-profitable, but
a good living nontheless).

2\. There may be a lot of non-web startups out there that need online services
of some kind - advertising/marketing, contact and booking management,
whatever.

3\. There are always profitable opportunities if you are prepared to do things
others are unwilling or unable to do.

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lzw
More variation in offline startups while the techniques for web startups
probably apply mostly to other web startups as well.

But I agree, there are often good ideas where the web is just ancillary, or
even enables the business but isn't the core.

