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Comment by tghw | Hacker News Reader

That's the Valley redefinition of a startup. You don't need rapid growth to be a startup. "A startup company or startup is a business in the form of a company, a partnership or temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model."[0]

Nor do you need to be a for-profit business to seek rapid growth. If we're going to measure based on "rapid growth", GiveDirectly has been a far more successful startup than most YC companies.

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company

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"designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model" means "designed for rapid growth".

Not at all. There are clear examples of when rapid growth has been neither repeatable nor scalable and the companies had to fold precisely because they grew too fast.

Backblaze is a great example of a company that could not have grown any more rapidly than it did. If they had, they would not have been able to source enough drives to continue and would have been faced with some difficult decisions.

Rapid growth is a great goal in some industries. But in others, a long, slow ramp up is better. That doesn't mean you can't have startups in those industries.

He said A means B, but you're refuting B means A.

If a company isn't seeking (relatively) rapid growth, it doesn't need a scalable business model.

That's why the local pizza join that just opened isn't a startup. They might be new, but they have no plans for innovating on their business model to reach larger scale.

> a repeatable and scalable business model

implies rapid growth.

I see nothing in the words "repeatable" or "scalable" that has to mean "rapid". To me a repeatable and scalable business model means one that can grow, and that isn't a one-time opportunity.

I guess the word rapid is ambiguous. Most chain restaurants have repeatable and scalable business models and as such count as startups, even if it takes ages for them to reach multinational status. However they're still rapid growth relative to the vast majority of fine dining restaurants that are unusual if they have more than one location. The repeatability and the scalability make them rapid growth because it's the assembly line approach to expanding the business.

What is an example of a repeatable and scalable business that is not rapid growth, relative to other businesses in the industry?

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