[jvkersch]

My (admittedly extremely limited) experience is that this is a sound strategy _for established entrepreneurs_, not for tentative business owners who are just getting started.

My wife and I were thinking about opening a restaurant, and as has been illustrated elsewhere, the costs are staggering and the total profit (if anything) is rather low. We were looking at total revenue of around £200 000, with maybe a 5% profit margin. This did not take into account kinda-expected risks, like staff quitting, which would have sent costs through the roof. By contrast, a little later we talked to a guy who sets up pubs for a living (for a large chain). They have costs down to a minimum, can rotate staff easily, and essentially have a playbook for starting a reasonably succesful, risk-free business in a few months. On top of that, they have departments full of people whose job it is to drive around looking for succesful business to copy (paraphrasing the original quote). This was profoundly depressing to me, since it made me think that even if we'd overcome the odds, we'd probably end up getting cloned by one of these behemoths...