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Comment by Etheryte | Hacker News Reader

Isn't what you're describing just running a regular company?

No, I actually think it's much more closely aligned with a VC business than a regular business. It's just a more "regular business" approach towards it. That is, it's still serving a large market, creating a competative advantage (which "regular businesses" rarely have), has compounding growth - it just doesn't need to rush to make it all happen in a few years in a very high risk way.

"That is, it's still serving a large market, creating a competative advantage (which "regular businesses" rarely have), has compounding growth - it just doesn't need to rush to make it all happen in a few years in a very high risk way."

You've just described a number of regular business I know. The idea that they're not trying to create competitive advantages is...flawed.

Happy to have my flawed thinking corrected - can you share the examples?

I likely am thinking of a narrow set of "regular businesses" - what came to mind were corner shops, hairdresses, bars or restaurants etc. Even in those cases there are obviously large successful busniesses that do have competitive advantages - but I suspect they mostly get erroded away by competition rather than the business being able to sustain them, and high margins. I would love some counter examples though!

As an example, I would say Microsoft is a regular business. Sure, at this point they're one of the largest companies in the world, but the way they operate is still largely the same as it has been. It ticks all the boxes you described as well.

what is the competitive advantage of ipinfo.io?

Data.

This is a really incredible article about the economics of data businesses, if you haven't seen it: https://pivotal.substack.com/p/economics-of-data-biz?s=r

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