Ask HN: Boring businesses which make non-boring money?

4 pointsmilliondollar4 comments

OK HN crowd, I need some help brainstorming. I would love to hear from you about businesses you have experiences with that are extremely profitable but are totally boring and non-sexy. Say, for example, scaffolding rental. Let's focus on businesses with some scale, things that you've seen get to $10-30M+ in revenue and $3-5M in profit. Recurring revenue a plus.

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Happened into a random chat with a small commercial fisherman (think Jaws boat) recently. He was lit and fed me a lot of details. Sounds like he makes a lot more than I do as an experienced computer guy. He certainly has a lot more houses.

My friends own a "vape juice" company - one of the larger ones I think. They're currently doing around $10-15M in revenue after starting just a few years ago.

Any sense of the profit margin they’re seeing?

Very large, haha. I know they've decreased over time as competition has moved in, but 2-3 years ago they were selling items that cost ~$1.50 to make for $25. They also run pretty lean from a personnel standpoint.

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