Ask HN: Web Startup versus Non-Web Startup

10 points by hammmatt 15 years ago | 7 comments

Since I have started visiting HN, I have seen many great reasons/examples for web startups.

However, I have come across some interesting examples of really cheap businesses to start that have very high returns by comparison.

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).

His business nets him $100,000 a year (confirmed), and his market is only a series of small towns in Northern Michigan.

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.

Web based companies can grow fast, have huge markets and can be started for very little.

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.

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

So I ask HN, why do we focus on web startups? Why not pay attention on all types of startups?

What about the gray areas in between? For example, creating your own hardware but selling different software for it online.

matthewphiong 15 years ago |

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"

hartard 15 years ago |

Clickable: http://www.scoopydoo.com

il 15 years ago | |

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

grep 15 years ago |

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

gregpilling 15 years ago |

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

zeemonkee 15 years ago | |

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.

lzw 15 years ago |

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.