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Comment by kwxza | Hacker News Reader

>There are so many businesses you can run that are almost impossible to fail.

Can you give examples of some of these businesses?

When it comes to "safe" businesses, some characteristics you may want to look for are: 1) high margins 2) inefficient operations 3)low barrier to entry 4) ability to drive down costs with technology

As an example, the moving business. The current rates are north of $100/hr. They pay their workers minimum wage. They are run by non-techies who drive inefficient ops.

Remember that you can always find reasons to NOT get into any business. Successful entrepreneurs are the ones who have the persistence to tackle problems and find creative ways to solve them efficiently. And, those creative solutions often won't be apparent until you pick an industry and dive in.

It's not that failure is eliminated, but you can run a business with almost no risk or capital exposure. If that business fails, you walk away with no damage done.

You have no capital exposure if either you (a) work full time and your living expenses are $0 e.g. parent's basement, or (b) you have a job to pay your living expenses and work on your business in your spare time and value your spare time at $0.

>capital exposure

Really, what type of companies are those? I've always seen the comment of, "there are so many more ways of making money than X" without the actual proposition of said companies. Hell, even Sam Altman said it in the Stanford Start-up class, but didn't give any examples.

Small consultancy or web dev business. Your risk is the cost of a laptop and your time.

Right. If you bill one hour and don't have to issue a refund, you're in the green. Nearly impossible to mess up. Harder to mess up than being an Uber driver with lower capital requirements.

A pub, a bakery, a well-placed gas station.

These are very hard businesses to run.

Pubs have to deal with liquor licenses, rowdy clients, high staff turnover, and very high rents to be anywhere other than a dive.

Bakeries have extremely high turnover, razor thin margins, expensive equipment, large kitchen, odd hours, and significant hours

Gas stations are all franchises. It is notoriously difficult to make money on a franchise (e.g., you might make 30 or 40k a year take home) and there are huge lists of things that a franchisee can be penalized for. Plus you are hiring the least educated staff on earth and have to deal with all that shit.

Compared to white collar work, which can pay 4-8x what you'd make doing any one of these, for a fraction of the headache.

This is a downright bizarre list of "no risk" businesses. The first two of your examples are both restaurants. Enough said on that. The last one is a franchise that sells a highly regulated commodity product from a brick and mortar storefront. I mean geez... what do you consider to be hard business?

Do you know how many pubs and bakeries fail?

"Pubs close at a rate of 18 a week as people stay at home more" (BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45086080 ).

As for "well placed gas station" that's factored in in paying enormously for the location.

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