alt Hacker News> How do I start a fulfillment business that can get a roll of toilet paper delivered to the doorstep of consumers nationwide inside of 24 hours and have that transaction be profitable?
As with all successful businesses, you start small.
You figure out what's your edge. You are resourceful.
You don't compete with ANY competitor by trying to do 100% what they do out of the gate.
Pro-tip: selling (rather than producing) toilet paper is probably never a big business anyhow.
If all we are going to do is engage in vague inspirational idealism rather than using realistic boundaries to the discussion I fear the relevance to the subject at hand fades away.
> You don't compete with ANY competitor by trying to do 100% what they do out of the gate.
This idea bleeds into the definition of a monopoly. I can’t just make a mobile operating system like Apple and Google because I won’t have a competitive advantage. I can’t make my own Amazon competitor because their edge is that they deliver more packages than UPS or FedEx. I can’t compete with Google search because the web browser that comes with Android defaults Google on the home page.
Sure, nobody is trying to do 100% of what their competitors do, but I wouldn’t be able to do 5% of what Amazon does even if you handed me billions in seed capital.