If you write software to teach Tibetan to Hungarian speakers, you'll be able to reach most of the people who want it, but there won't be many of them.
It may not scale, but the chances of it making (any/more) money are much higher ("riches are in the niches") than a "fast startup" as it's very rare for a startup to grow fast and monetize quickly at the same time, because most people just won't buy immediately, sometimes even if it solves a problem for them.
For example, I've been using Evernote and Dropbox for years, but haven't had the need to buy a premium account. I believe there are many others like me who are happy with the free (or open source) software that does solve an itch. Are these "fast startups"? Is their business model (freemium) scalable?
It may not scale, but the chances of it making (any/more) money are much higher ("riches are in the niches") than a "fast startup" as it's very rare for a startup to grow fast and monetize quickly at the same time, because most people just won't buy immediately, sometimes even if it solves a problem for them.
That is the exact point of the essay. An average niche business makes more money than an average startup, but a successful startup makes many orders of magnitude more money than a successful niche business.
You might mean: a median niche business makes more money than a median startup.
Average is much higher than a median for startups because it includes the most successful startups which are by definition have a high growth rate over an extended period of time so they are very big.
Niche businesses in this context have a low growth so their average is closer to the median. The growth is constrained at the top in absolute terms (otherwise it would be a startup) so the average is lower than the one for startups.
It may not scale, but the chances of it making (any/more) money are much higher ("riches are in the niches") than a "fast startup" as it's very rare for a startup to grow fast and monetize quickly at the same time, because most people just won't buy immediately, sometimes even if it solves a problem for them.
For example, I've been using Evernote and Dropbox for years, but haven't had the need to buy a premium account. I believe there are many others like me who are happy with the free (or open source) software that does solve an itch. Are these "fast startups"? Is their business model (freemium) scalable?