The difference is in the HN-style (and Bay Area) understanding of the word "startup", which is focused on hyper growth at all costs or bust. Starting a small business in something like HVAC is very different in that you typically start small, with relatively low ambition, and grow the business organically over a long period of time. The latter is definitely difficult and sometimes stressful, but not in the same way as when you have investors pushing you to bump your revenue up by 10x in the next year or gtfo.
There was an article on HN about extremely successful Mormon startups. Interesting that they all manage to leave the office at 5pm (because they all have 6 kids) and build multi-billion dollar businesses.
Would you mind linking? I'd love to read that article. I've anecdotally begin to notice more and more B2B startups from Utah make it onto the map that fit just that profile.
