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Comment by hermannj314 | Hacker News Reader

I think it is a wonderful time to start a business. Owner-run businesses tend to have great customer service. As consumers, we have some choice to give our attention to businesses where the people doing the work are the ones that own the company, if they aren't, then give your money to someone else. Stop supporting businesses that pay their taxes to Ireland.

This isn't a perfect solution and I know there are counter-examples, but I have been much more satisfied supporting small, local or owner-run shops.

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I've realized this as well, the bigger the company the worse the experience.

The more customers they have the less they care about any individual customer.

The more products they have the less they care about any single product.

The more employees they have the less they care about each individual employee doing a good job. And there's no they any more, there's a big, soul-less profit glutton.

This doesn't apply to small residential contractors. I've had nothing but bad experiences hiring contractors. They rarely do the work themselves and instead hire subcontractors who don't understand the requirements and care very little about the outcome. I've had better experiences with companies who are large enough to care about their reputation, or contractors i know personally.

I wish I knew that one month ago. Hired a small local company to fix something in my house, great reviews in yelp/facebook/google, license+insurance. The guy came for the estimate and everything felt smooth. Two other guys came for the actual job, no company, no license, I couldn't even communicate with them until I opened voice translator. They did a terrible job and made the situation worse than before.

Starting a business, but that requires financial independence, right?

If not, what do you do in your 40's with no healthcare? Or the state marketplace healthcare that is basically 'catrastrophe only', with no out of network support, and still costs over 800 a month?

Do you rent, or do you own, and if you own, how about the property taxes.

Starting a business in 2026 is for the Made Men of tech, who've sold monstrous share amounts for millions, and can post messages on Hackernews with advice on how to escape the rat race.

> Starting a business, but that requires financial independence, right?

What are you even talking about. How many of your local restaurants, coffee shops, laundromats, roofing companies, landscape consultants, shoe repair shops etc do you think are owned by anyone with financial independence?

Right. Your suggestion seemed to be that's the path we should go down - the restaurant industry, which has a very high failure rate. Or do we become master electricians?

This isn't the 1950s - spending is down everywhere, costs are up, interests rates are high.

I'm not the original poster, but your notion that starting a business is for financially independent "made men" was just dumb and out of touch. There's a reason immigrants are frequently restauranteers and laundromat owners, and it's not because they came over with millions.

If you expect to switch right over from tech and make 200k, you will be sorely disappointed. If you expect to be destitute you may be quite surprised.

Also the failure rate for restaurants is on par with the failure rate for other service providing businesses. The fact that the number includes so many uneducated, inexperienced, frankly average or below average intelligence people who open restaurants should indicate to you that it's not really that impossible of an endeavor.

Yes, I agree. When shopping for goods and services locally, I look for the small shop that gets the best reviews. It's always been a better experience for me. The small companies can't afford to shaft 5% of their customers in the same way the big ones can.

And where do you get reviews that are not farmed / AI?

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