I see a lot of successful entrepreneurs in non-fancy, "old" businesses like Steel, Waste Management/Pickup, etc.
My immediate thoughts are that these are really saturated, so how do people start up businesses in these areas? They are not "improving" anything, so how would a new business work when it comes to making these more traditional, non-tech businesses?
How do people start in these “old,” non-fancy businesses?
byu/MrMrag inEntrepreneur
Posted by MrMrag
7 Comments
Offer a product or service, sell it to people, add some competitive advantage like pricing or material acquisition, work hard. Same same
You can undercut the incumbents via a number of methods.
For example, find cheap inexperienced labor. Utilize older equipment the majors may have cast off. Or find a way to make your newer equipment way more efficient.
A few years back the low interest rates helped tremendously.
Under bid until you can get enough volume to sell out to the incumbent.
You see a lot of successful entrepreneurs in steel manufacturing?
Sometimes the improvement isn’t in the product itself, it’s in the process. With something like waste management, you could have better software to schedule deliveries, and make it easier for the clients. That could enable you to beat the incumbents, and gain market share, even in a mature industry.
Sometimes people get into business by accident. They take over something small from their parents, and then figure out a way to grow it. My friend went to high school with a guy whose father had a small steel distribution company, with a handful of employees. Guy took over from his dad, grew it to 5,000 employees, and sold it for billions. You don’t have to have a better idea in business, if you can outwork, and outsmart your competition.
Are you implying that there are many new entrepreneurs that successfully start a steel/waste management company recently?
Gonna need some data to back that sentiment here
The reason new entreprenuers usually don’t bother with “old” business is because many of them are close to impossible to penetrate
I started my business providing custom metal work for the racing industry. I had a FT job in that industry for 6 years at the time, working for another company. I had a 1 car garage, got my first job, and I borrowed a friend’s sheet metal brake. Got paid for my first job and bought a sheet metal brake on my own. Did another job, bought a welder. Another job, another tool. Rinse and repeat and one day I turned around and had 50 employees and 42,000 sf of space. Building blocks, stack one on top of the other. 👍
I worked in construction for several years, then bought and grew a business in the same industry. There is a lot of room to improve when everyone else is on the trailing edge of technology. Bidding based on algorithms that use historical data, modeling market trends over time, having a website. All these things are uncommon.
Old non-fancy ways to compete would be: returning phone calls and emails, following up, and meeting expectations. I am still amazed by the number of business I interact with that do a poor job of handling people who are trying to give them money.