How would you get into the biz?

Check out those Cessaro Lizst's for sale at the bottom of this thread.$160,000!!!!    Can you build something like that! Because that is what the people with real money want! The future is in building and selling bespoke products for the 1%!          Ferrari's rather than Ford's!  And that takes plenty of moolah!

I'd do it like Nelson Pass. You don't have to design $100,000 amps or speakers to make a living. Focal got it's start building small 2 way speakers. If you build a quality product at almost any price point people will buy it. The First Watt J2 was called amp of the year by Stereophile and that's an amp that cost less than $1000 to build. They go for $4000 though. 

Note that the first J2 was built after an amazingly successful career that earned Pass a legendary status in the audio community…so I suppose having a legendary status in the audio community is highly recommended before starting a new thing. On that note, I attended a Yale seminar years ago (my wife's reunion…I aint no Ivy Leaguer) presumably about "mid life career changing," and the panelists all had ridiculously successful banking careers before making a change (true)…thus the answer to How to Start a Successful Business is clearly start out not having to. I just bought an amp from Dennis Had's retirement (from Cary Audio) hobby…great amp.