Start simple and evolve

Filed in archive Philosophy on June 22, 2006

This is a reflection on blogger Jeff Cornwall's post about growing beyond your niche at The Entrepreneurial Mind.

Referring to a story at StartupJournal about Home Depot Inc. and Sam's Club moving in on the mom and pop car wash industry, Jeff writes:

Success rates tend to be higher for niche businesses since they have less direct competition. Without much competition, niche businesses can charge higher prices, which allows for quicker positive cash flow during start-up and better margins once profitable.

He adds:

While significant growth in your market niche may not sound bad, it can attract more competitors...That requires that you adapt your business strategies to this more competitive market.

But from Woese's "cellular organizations" swimming in a primordial gene soup to a child slowly learning semantics through understanding of syntax, bootstrapping in biology, linguistics, electronics and, yes, business is all about adaptation.

No, bigger is not always better, but more complex (read diversified) usually is. Though finding a niche to fill may be important while starting out, those businesses that wait to grow beyond that niche until competition threatens have probably waited too long already.