The third repair counter

In an arcade in Batha, in Riyadh, a third phone repair counter is about to open in a corridor that already has two. The young man behind it has heard every objection. It is not new. There are already two. Why would anyone choose him?

Both objections assume the same thing: that a business needs an idea nobody has had and a patch of ground nobody else is standing on. Almost nothing that works began that way. The tailors, printers and repairers every neighbourhood relies on are mostly doing what somebody else did first. They last because people pick them.

And people pick them for reasons that are rarely original. The phone comes back the same day. The cost is said out loud before the work starts. He remembers your name. He tells you honestly when a repair is not worth doing. Care and execution, repeated, until customers start sending their cousins.

Seen that way, the two counters already in the corridor are not a warning. They are evidence. People bring broken phones to this corridor, compare and choose. A crowded field usually means a real need. An empty one often means there is none.

The fear of competition kills more early projects than competition does. It is easier to stay sceptical, or to take a safe job behind someone else's counter, than to stand behind your own and say this one is mine.

That is the real requirement. Not a new idea and not an empty corridor, but someone willing to turn up and lead.