A few months ago I got an email from a 28-year-old entrepreneur about his tech company. His pitch was a model of clarity and brevity, devoid of PR-speak. He wrote about “aiming to replicate the success of online estate agent Purplebricks in an equally large, albeit more boring market: boiler installations.”
I was interested in Simon Phelan and Hometree, his online gas boiler installation company. A smart ex-plumber with a plan to disrupt his own industry is intriguing. And admitting that you are in a “boring” business is refreshingly honest, but clever too, because it is almost unheard of.
Start-ups doing anything new, cute or plain off-the-wall often struggle. Two years ago I wrote about a pavement delivery drone, which has yet to hit all but a handful of streets. Virtual reality is nowhere near mainstream. Doppler Labs, the company behind Here One wireless earbuds — which allowed listeners to “edit” the sound around them by tuning out annoying noise — failed, in spite of investors such as David Geffen and Henry Kravis.