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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

As Steve Blank tirelessly repeats, a startup is NOT a business, but a temporary organization searching for a viable business model.[1]

The Samwer brothers don't invest in startups! They invest in viable business models. They don't fund search; they fund only execution.

[1] http://steveblank.com/2012/03/05/search-versus-execute/

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Steve Blank (and the rest of the lean crowd) are entitled to their own opinions. To most people, "startup" just means new tech companies...

Even going with his definition of a startup, a viable business model in one country does not guarantee viability in another.

You could argue these are not startups because of the massive organization now backing each of them, but that's a different line.

I'm glad you reminded me that Steve Blank is the only living authority on start-ups, and that the word start-up can only mean precisely what he says, and nothing else.

Can you not make your point without the sarcasm and snarkiness? When I found HN, the reasoned, respectful discussions were what made it different from other sites. Posts like yours make this feel more like Slashdot.

Just because some startups don't start out with a viable business model does not mean that all startups follow this model; there are plenty of startups being created with clear ideas about how to turn their idea into a business.

The definition of a startup is, technically, a newly established company. There is no reason to subvert the terminology.

When Steve Blank writes about how to run a startup, he's really writing about how to search for a viable business model, so he defines "startup" to refer to an organization that does that. The definition has mostly to do with the internal coherency of Steve Blank's writings; it's not especially useful to reapply that definition to somebody else's writings since you don't know what they mean by "startup".

Once you get past the semantics, I fail to see what substantive point you're making here.

I don't think they really care if they are viable business models - see their investment in a Groupon clone. I think what they are doing is simply copying companies, creating them with the sole purpose of being bought by the company that originated the idea. There's nothing in any of these articles that says they're creating viable businesses (they may have some however). So what they are doing, in my opinion, is similar to what patent trolls do - extract money/stock from VC-rich startups. Wash, rinse, repeat.

It will/would be interesting to see how they do in a down startup environment where the VC money isn't flowing quite so freely.

I'm very happy they do what they do. Cool online services often take a long time to become availiable Europe. Because of people like the Samwer brothers, that delay has a cost.

Good for you, assuming they deliver on the experience/promise. Bad for the start ups they are copying.

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