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Invisible Companies

colossus.com

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Re: Invisible Companies

#11

Post by garrickvanburen »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #9
skinfaxi wrote: post #6

There are many opportunities to start the your own invisible company. I once started a small business ($33k/year) that sold exactly one product to one company for a few years. One thing the article glosses over in the Steven Ross discussion is that this guy was clearly entrepreneurial: he was able to see the gaps and find or build solutions to fill them. You can in fact build a business around solving a "simple" prob…

every large XLS-file/table in any large/mega Corp is basicly crying to get "re-invented" as a SaaS service and being sold to them (-:

This was my mantra when I ran strategy for a corporate venture studio: every existing spreadsheet is a prototype for a potential new product

Re: Invisible Companies

#12

Post by npilk »

My impression is that these companies are less invisible than ever thanks to the massive growth in private equity since Ross' era (the 50s-80s). I keep hearing stories about pest control businesses and HVAC companies that get inundated with messages from search funds.

Re: Invisible Companies

#13

Post by jermaustin1 »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #9
skinfaxi wrote: post #6

There are many opportunities to start the your own invisible company. I once started a small business ($33k/year) that sold exactly one product to one company for a few years. One thing the article glosses over in the Steven Ross discussion is that this guy was clearly entrepreneurial: he was able to see the gaps and find or build solutions to fill them. You can in fact build a business around solving a "simple" prob…

every large XLS-file/table in any large/mega Corp is basicly crying to get "re-invented" as a SaaS service and being sold to them (-:

I worked for a different Steve Ross (Dolphins owner, Related Companies, etc), and we did this in house.

From 2008-2017, “we” (I was a contractor 08-09, and employee 15-17) basically turned every spreadsheet into a web application internally.

We added authentication and authorization, used a LOT of ETL-type processing to move data around. So many things could have been packaged and sold, but that was the “secret sauce” that kept the company so profitable.

Then the end in 2017 when a new CIO came in, killed off IT (laid off all non-managers over the course of a year), and replaced everyone with South African consultants to turn IT from a cost center to a profit center.

He lasted another couple years then left.

Re: Invisible Companies

#14

Post by owisd »

Fortune's Formula by William Poundstone strongly insinuates Kinney Services got started as a gambling front, so possibly a poor example of a boring business turning a healthy profit.

Re: Invisible Companies

#16

Post by abhayaya »

jyounker wrote: post #10
Animats wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think that all those Persian carpet stores on University Avenue in Palo Alto were a way to get immigrants jobs in the US. But no. Turns out the carpet store guy had been renting upstairs office space to startups in exchange for an equity stake. That worked out very, very well for him. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/165_University_Avenue

Oriental carpet stores are interesting businesses. I always wondered how they stayed open until I met someone whose family has been in the business for several generations. Individual sales are in the thousands, so they operate more like high-end jewelry stores than a "normal" business. One sale a day is minimum 250K/year. The store itself seems to be more of just a show room. There are other sales routes too. Sellin…

Oriental carpet stores seem to be doing alright still in the bay; less so in Manhattan, though you would think the same opportunity to rent property to startups could exist. Many of them have shut down or are only open by appointment. None of them offer the personal service I suspect the author is insinuating exists still. Near as I know that level of bespoke care died off a couple of decades ago unless you are very wealthy. No doubt the competition (but not competition) of sites like etsy, temu, ebay, and the large number of people who think things look sorta like something nicer contributed to the death of the end-to-end streets of Persian carpet stores. I still remember purchasing a knock off for under $85 during the dotcom boom. Nothing was individually dyed; it was all mostly just meant to look that way, like most 'oriental' carpet now. The materiels going into making the new-fangled rug bears no resemblence to those which make an old-style one. God-forbid you drop the wrong beverage or something on a really good old hand-made rug and the dye runs. Shopping in those large Persian rug stores are still lovely, when you can find one that is open (by appointment or not). They rarely have posted hours either.

Re: Invisible Companies

#17

Post by jtrn »

Here is the entire article compressed from 21k characters to 176:

It’s easier to get away with large margins and not spawn competitors if nobody scrutinizes you, and it’s easier not to get scrutinized if you are small or the domain is boring.

Not a knock on the article. It’s nice to double-click on a concept and explore it with examples and from many angles. But for me, it would have been easier to start with that framing, because it took way too long to understand the purpose of the article, atleast for me.

Re: Invisible Companies

#18

Post by latexr »

Animats wrote: post #4

There's a whole genre of YouTube cartoon videos about this. Dry cleaners.[1] Parking lots.[2] 7 boring businesses.[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0cASirKyE [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4SAUvmKz4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebaiF97mCtM&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D...

All of those are clearly AI-generated. You shouldn’t trust any “edutainment” videos made that way, chances are there has been zero fact-checking and that the creator hasn’t even watched the result of their slop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gnrp_caPvo

Re: Invisible Companies

#19

Post by Anonyneko »

Animats wrote: post #4

There's a whole genre of YouTube cartoon videos about this. Dry cleaners.[1] Parking lots.[2] 7 boring businesses.[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0cASirKyE [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4SAUvmKz4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebaiF97mCtM&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D...

If only all of these weren't AI slop :(

Re: Invisible Companies

#20

Post by jstummbillig »

jtrn wrote: post #17

Here is the entire article compressed from 21k characters to 176: It’s easier to get away with large margins and not spawn competitors if nobody scrutinizes you, and it’s easier not to get scrutinized if you are small or the domain is boring. Not a knock on the article. It’s nice to double-click on a concept and explore it with examples and from many angles. But for me, it would have been easier to start with that fr…

As always the writing could be denser, but that is very lossy compression. I enjoyed the full read!
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