He also had to launch the first commercial domestic power station. Power and light, both together.
This is Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan, New York, which launched in late 1882. It lit 400 light bulbs. Get that, 400.
Of course - and this is what I thought was neat - it wasn't enough to ship both light bulbs and power. You've got a distribution problem. Like, how do you get the electricity from the power station to the houses. Edison couldn't persuade town hall to let him do it, so he had to use his back-channel connections to the mayor to dig up the streets and build a distribution network of 10,000 foot of cable conduits.
Another problem -- billing! Like, how do you even charge for this? Edison had to invent the right business model, but it wasn't ready at launch. So the system went live in September 1882, then he had to invent the electricity meter and the first bill wasn't sent out till January 1883.
It's all so very startup.
Matt Webb, Web Directions South 2014 (Sydney, Australia), October 2014