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A comment on Ask HN: What are the least competitive consumer and enterprise markets?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What are the least competitive consumer and enter... by guiriduro on Friday August 07, 2020 @04:42AM (#24079752)
Starbucks is an essentially American phenomenon. e.g., nobody in Europe ever thought coffee shops needed to become branded chains that set a single product quality expectation, because almost nobody who'd ever visited an Italian/mediterranean-style cafe ever thought they lacked a quality or sociability option to begin with. Sure, some chains exist, but the quality delta between them and the average cafe isn't great enough to scale fast.

Only in a place where coffee is generally awful, and VC money easy, could the concept that became Starbucks ever come into existence.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the least competitive consumer and enter... by nmfisher on Friday August 07, 2020 @06:39AM (#24080446)
There's a whole lot factually wrong about your comment (Starbucks started as a single cafe, it wasn't funded by VC, and it started in the 70s/80s when money was far from cheap, and 1/3 of its total outlets are in Asia).

But that's all beside the point. I'm not saying an Italian would be able to replicate Starbucks in Italy. What I'm saying is that there are countless opportunities staring us right in the face, every day, and 99% of people see a cafe and think "it can't scale, it's local demand only, there's no point, why bother", the remaining 1% see Starbucks.

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