Comment by johnvonneumann | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnvonneumann | Hacker News Reader

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As someone who comes from parents who own a small construction company, I think you've actually gotten it the wrong way round. What you say could be construed as correct, but in the wrong way. From what I understand, many small businesses (especially those who are Mum and Dad run) are only looking for small business, they have no interest in going bigger, why would they? In the majority of cases, the work they do more than covers the bills, people may think that bigger is always better, but when the business supports a family, this is rarely the case, bigger can actually be far worse. Not to mention that much like was mentioned/alluded to in this article, founder rates of pay/benefits are pretty much never the same as would have to be paid to a "normal" employee. This is unscalable, I know Paul Graham has referred to this idea before, so I won't explain it worse.

TL;DR

Most small businesses owners are far better rational decision makers than you think, because most of the time, the aim of the game is not a unicorn, it's support of the family.

There's one kind of growth where you are investing dollars in marketing, sales, hiring and scaling the YoY percentage points; another, where you're investing in efficiency, automation, better gigs, and reduced work load. Why wouldn't anyone be interested in the latter? Small businesses aren't aware what technology can do for them and often, there's a reluctance to change.

I am not sure if businesses have become tired of the constant bombardment of promises that don't have a solid ground but I believe some level of effort can make a positive change in their lives.

Maybe good enough is just good enough for some business owners?

If you are making good profit already, which more than covers your needs, why bother looking into improved efficiency, automation, getting better gigs, etc? It's not that you can just flip 'efficiency' switch and things are more efficient.

In some cases, sticking to doing things in a familiar way and which works well enough is a rather reasonable decision in the grand scheme of things.

It's true, some people have to dragged into the future. When shopping carts first came about, stores had to hire people to go around the store demonstrating the benefit of using a shopping cart.

At the same time, if you've not read the fisherman and the businessman (1 minute read), the ending is relevant to your discussion.

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/09/04/the-fisherman-and-the-...

Coming from a similar family background I think thats why I said: 'economically rationale decision makers'.

Overall financial gain may not be the only thing they optimize for. For example their life style (being able to answer call whenever they want).

Ahh sorry if I came off to be attacking you man, wasn't my intention at all.

And yeah you got it spot on! I know that for my Dad in particular, he always said to me whenever I mentioned scaling the business up and taking on more guys that whilst it would be nice, it would likely mean more of a managerial position, keeping an eye on projects and that. He said he runs his own business to avoid being at the grindstone 24/7, he was always able to come and see school sports and participate in that sort of stuff. I always found it pretty self-controlled tbh, knowing that he could have scaled it up, but knowing the game would change if he did.

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