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ameliustoday at 8:39 PM1 replyview on HN

> He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable.

You mean like opening a restaurant?

Too bad delivery services like Uber Eats totally own the market now.

Starting a hotel? Booking.com and Airbnb are there to take your profit margins away!


Replies

InexSquirreltoday at 8:49 PM

I think that delivery services give you bigger market, but not intrinsic scale. You're still limited by kitchen size, staff numbers, and raw hours you can put into the food.

You can scale the system (say Subway, or even smaller chains like Burger Fuel), but also reasonably choose _not_ to scale and still do incredibly well (like Michelin star restaurants, or the myriad of hyper-famous-locally Japanese eateries, or Fergburger in Queenstown).

Someone scaling their own restaurant on the other side of the world won't necessarily out compete out (and in the overwhelming majority of cases with have no impact at all). Despite fast food joints all over the place, I still see small cafes, individual eateries, etc performing well (I mean, as well as hospitality can be).

Maybe it's worth expanding the definition of > make sure it is NOT scalable < to include 'make sure it's not automatable'?

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