Great entrepreneurs copy

So many first time founders proudly announce that they’re going to change a market or even change the world with their business.
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It pisses me off and it doesn’t make any sense!
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“Hold on,” I tell them.
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We have industries that are working and thriving right now. We have companies that are providing this product or service RIGHT NOW that are making phenomenal money and you want to change everything about the way they are doing business? Why?!
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The replies I get to this are almost always cringeworthy. These founders who have no network, capital, or experience believe they'll "disrupt" an industry before they've made a single sale.
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Unfortunately, most people today have been outright manipulated to believe they need a huge moat or unique innovation to build a successful company.
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That is total bullshit!
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I'm here to tell you that entrepreneurship is about making money. It doesn’t matter how new and disruptive your idea is.
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All that matters is providing value to a customer and building a profitable/sustainable company. Success in business is not rocket science!
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So here's my advice:
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When you are starting a company you do NOT want to spend months rethinking a business model or intentionally trying to do everything differently just so you can say you that "innovated."
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Your job is to figure out how to make money by studying what is working TODAY.
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From there, you just need to implement the tactics and strategies that are working for others, stay consistent, and do the common things uncommonly well.
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You have to master the fundamentals first and get to at least $1M+ in ebitda before you try to innovate or add anything new. That’s it.
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Also, I’m not against innovation, but I believe that innovation is the long lost cousin of simply copying and modifying what is working for others today.
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I innovate in my companies all the time but not in groundbreaking, revolutionary, or out of the box ways.
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I generally get inspired by things that are working for my other businesses, for my competitors, or for companies in other industries altogether.
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I take a little bit of this from that operator, or an insight that someone says on Twitter or something I saw a competitor do and apply it to my business with a slightly new spin that makes sense for us and voila!
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My business grows.
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That's why I think most businesses are what I call "franken businesses" where the founders or CEOs take all of the best bits and pieces from other companies they've studied or read about or transacted with over time and then they apply those learnings to their own firms to improve.
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They learn a bit about marketing from company A and sales from company B, and ops from company C, and management best practices from company D and they combine all of these insights and apply them to their own businesses.
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And they do this because it works.
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This is how businesses are built in the real world.
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The reality is: A business is a collection of tactics and strategies that were inspired by other businesses winning in the market today.
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Not much of it is actually new. Someone else did it first.
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So your goal is to build a franken-business.
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It's good to be inspired by what actually works.
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It's productive to be inspired by company A, B, or C. It shouldn't be taboo to say that you do sales like other rockstar companies or you run Meta ads because millions of other businesses do the same to drive demand.
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Remember you don’t get extra points for playing the entrepreneurship game on hard mode.
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You don't get extra points for re-inventing the wheel especially when you have no customers or cashflow at all.
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There are tens of millions of businesses worldwide that make phenomenal money each year and power the economy without much innovation at all.

Very few of them are new idea businesses.
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Most are sweaty startups or traditional companies in legacy industries.
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They are all franken-businesses in one way or another and they all copy off what has worked for others in their industry or adjacent fields.
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Success in business is not rocket science. Don't treat it like it is.
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Onward and upward,

Nick Huber

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