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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

I don't see it ever happening. I would not even call LivingSocial a "startup" at this point, they've been around a few years at least. Their new strategy (discounts linked to credit card) seems uninteresting, hard to scale, and something that dozens of others have been doing for a while now (none of whom I can name, because who cares?)

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9 years.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/livingsocial#/entity

Yes. For me, a startup is a new business formed to discover a new product or business model. Then once they've found that, they enter a phase of very rapid scaling. I'm ok with calling those startups as well, as they're still very learning-focused. But once they have a reasonably stable product and revenue stream, I think it's a mistake to call them startups any more. Their values and behaviors become much more like typical companies.

In my opinion, at the point LivingSocial copied Groupon's business model, they weren't a startup anymore; before that they were a social app on Facebook.

You're only a startup if you have an entirely original business model? I don't agree with that definition.

I think it means, at the point in TIME when they became a groupon copy they where already past the "startup" phase.

Not that they stopped being a startup because they copied groupon

Crazy to see the downvote mafia around here on this kind of thing.

Hmm, you may be right. Definitely not how I read it at first.

In any event, I think they were a startup at that point in time, but I can see how reasonable people might disagree.

This may be a 'No true Scotsman'

No True Scotsman keeps moving the goal posts by endlessly revising the definitions of terms in a debate.

LivingSocial is not a startup, it's just a company that isn't doing very well right now. It's not in a "growth period", in fact it's already gone through this kind of firing before.

2014: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/livi...

2012: http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/29/technology/livingsocial-layo...

These guys even tried to recruit me last year. I declined politely due to the apparent 2-year lifespan their staff has.

Southwest Airlines has one that gets you Rapid Rewards points for registering a credit card and eating at certain places: https://www.rapidrewardsdining.com/

I registered, because why not, but most of the restaurants in it are pretty crap.

All airlines do this, all run by the same vendor: http://www.rewardsnetwork.com/earn/

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