Startup minor leagues

When I describe what I do to people, I often say that I'm playing in the startup minor leagues. The reason I like this analogy is that it gets across the idea that I am not trying to grow a rocketship startup by blitzscaling, but instead I'm working on growing a less ambitious business that teaches you how to do all of the fundamentals with way less risk.

I find startups to be an area where for whatever reason (most likely the glorified stories of 1 in a million startup founders), people think they can enter a new industry, with no relevant experience, maybe no experience in business whatsoever and be able to create a business that changes the world. More often than not, these ideas never leave the founder's head or disappear back into the air when they are erased from the whiteboard they were feverishly sketched out on. Or even worse, they result in lost fortunes and wasted time.

There's a reason why sports teams have minor leagues, companies (at least used to) have training programs and armies have bootcamp. If you can find something that replicates what you want to do, but on an easier difficulty level, that you can use to grow your skills and confidence, whey wouldn't you do that first? Yet, time and again, I see people who want to raise money for massive ideas that at best will turn into a time-suck and at worst will result in founders in way over their heads with unhappy investors.

There is an alternative: the minor leagues of startups. You can build plugins, integrations or templates for well known tools that people already use. This gives you a head-start, not just in terms of building product (since you are building on top of something that is already there), but also in marketing, since a lot of your content will involve writing about the platform you choose to build on.

As a downside, it might not be the most exciting, but you can definitely grind your way to a career. (the same way that a journeyman catcher might make a decent living hopping around AA baseball clubs) But the difference is, you don't have physical limitations that a baseball player does - you can keep learning and getting better while you're grinding in the startup minor leagues, and who knows, maybe one day you will see that big shot and actually be ready to take it.