---
title: "On Tiers"
description: "The tiers of entrepreneurship"
author: "Ghaith Ayadi"
site: "Verbatim"
collection: "Hokum"
url: "https://verbatim.ayadighaith.com/hokum/on-tiers"
date: 2023-11-24
updated: 2026-09-16
---
# On Tiers

The tiers of entrepreneurship

- Collectors: this is when the "Business" is about curating a list of some sort, for inspiration of otherwise. You can also lump in the teachers and the gurus with this. It's certainly entrepreneurship so I respect it because it's better than my professional prostitution, but it's the lowest form. Designers, because we are undoubtedly the worst entrepreneurs, are very good at this. That's why there's 700 gajilion inspiration websites.
- Meta-entrepreneurship: It's when the founder solves the problem of other founders. Sometimes they work like that one startup that helps startups encorporate. Sometimes they're stupid, like idea generators. But often times it's subtle: to-do list apps, calendar apps, conferencing, habit tracking... All of these are mostly done by people who's problem is that they want to be entrepreneurs so they're trying too hard to find a problem to solve. This makes them hyper aware of microscopic issues in their lives and there's plenty of those around their most used tool: productivity app. They think that a little variation to an existing thing can blow up and become the next Notion. Garbage. That's why there's 700 gazilion calendar apps and everyone uses google calendar. It's nice, but not nice enough to change. These entrepreneurs are the ones that come up with the fun stuff that the better entrepreneurs steal later on for free.
- The same but different: This one is tricky because it's fundamentally sound yet a lot of morons die here. These entrepreneurs understand that innovation is not about disrupting the whole thing but about keeping mostly everything and changing one or two important area. The challenge is that most morons in this field thing like: "Imagine Tinder, but you can only have one match at a time". While that could be an interesting idea, they don't understand that scaling something is often most of the problem. Everyone has an idea to make facebook better. But we still can't figure out how to big big like facebook for our idea to matter. Garbage
- The something of something entrepreneurship: The uber of proctology or the airbnb of prisons. These get a bad rep. They say that If you're the something of something then you're the nothing iof nothing. Nonesense. There's nothing wrong about this model except that it's unimaginative. I respect these entrepreneurs. They make sense to me.
- Trend-surfers: the blockchain bro, the AI chap, and the internet of things fella all have something in common: They usually don't understand the trend they're trying to capitalize on, but they know that other people will and they want in. I respect these people a lot. "Hum, the metaverse, you say.... Let me tinker with that and see what comes up" is definately how innovation happens. The challenge is that it's a numbers game and we're all usually too late to capitalize big time.
- The veterans: these are my favorite entrepreneurs. They worked in a field since the dawn of time and they know everything about everything. They know exactly what the problem, how much a solution is worth and how to sell it to those who need it. All they need is yours truely to build the thing. They stay out of your way, they don't care about the fonts but they still want a big logo which I'm happy to provide.

My favorite entrepreneurs sell 8hit you never heard of. That's when you know they're headed to success 😂. But if somebody is building a calendar app, run for the hills because everyone thought of everything before and there's a reason why we don't have it already 🙂