What is a Business?

I used to think that business is an enterprise where you build a product and go to the market to sell it. However it seems that i was very wrong.

I went to Mumbai in June, 2025 to build a startup called SuperFlights. I was young and excited. I thought we were building the next big thing. Then one day a guy asked me a question regarding what I was building.

I stopped. I started thinking. Then I said a Flight Booking Engine. The man was confused. He said, "Yeah, but there are dozen of companies who do that. Why would anyone buy tickets from you specifically."

At that point I did not have an answer. Me and my co founder went for a smoke and started thinking. What was it that made us unique? Another question arose. "Do we need to be unique?"

I don't think so. Uniqueness is not the factor that matters in business. Sure its a great thing to have especially if you have monopolization of that sector, but no one is stopping others to get into it and kill your "uniqueness". Lyft started before Uber and yet everyone knows Uber and its a billion dollar empire.

Timing also does not matter. It matters not if you were early or not. Its meaningless to be early or late.Then what differentiates businesses?

I thought as I lit up another cigarette. What is the factor that makes businesses work. I thought and thought and thought.

I think I found an answer I said. It is very simple and we tend to overcomplicate it.

A business is something which fulfils the need of someone and ideally a problem is large enough that you can make a business out of it. However everyone knows this and there are business which fail even after this. It really matters not how good the thing you are selling is. Ideally it does matters but more importantly what matters is that you can bring your solution to the people who are in need.

I think it is Distribution which is the most important part of a business. If your product is the best and no one knows about it, its just a gold in a desert. Useless!