Probably 20% (edit, now that I think of it, maybe up to 50%) of "hot new startups" I see posted to the front page of HN on a weekly basis are an existing business model with a slick web 2.0 front end, CSS/HTML5, etc, a marketing department run by generation Y and some mobile app developers.

Yup. Amazon is 'just' a department store with home delivery - been around since Victorian times. Google - directory enquiries. First launched in the 1930s. /s

Just because a business is using a proven model, doesn't mean it can't be a "hot new startup". Good for those businesses with sound fundamentals made accessible through new technology.

Slack is a perfect example of this.

ircd-hybrid or bust!

Yeah - aren't a good 20% of Silicon Valley startups just Unix commands reinvented (badly) as websites?

I'll by a beer for the first person to get to Unicorn status with an actual shell buitin (as opposed to all the SaaS companies that are just repackaged standard Linux/Unix distribution packages).

(Rushes off to register echo.io, pwd.io and logout.io...)

I'm off to found Ellis (ls), the company that displays current directory information, file creation information, and file ownership in an easy to use dashboard, but with websockets, Golang and React. Quick somebody give me a super new log structured merge tree db to use to store Ellis data.

Shut up and take my money!!!

this. It doesn't matter who does it first, it matters who does it best.

I think of it as 20% of startups is an existing product made shitty.

Twitter? Blogging, but you can only write two sentences. That's shitty!

Vine? Video uploading, but you can only store a few seconds. That's shitty!

Snapchat? Chat, but your messages disappear after a few seconds. That's shitty!

Less is more, sometimes.

Hacker News is a forum with very few additional features found on more popular sites like Reddit, and is significantly more narrow in topic scope and userbase.

That's...better. But it also depends on where you prefer to talk tech.

It's not even a deliberate misrepresentation - in most cases the people involved really, genuinely believe that they have come up with something that no-one else thought of.

The question is why investors, who are supposed to be well informed, continue to back companies that know so little about the industries and markets they're operating in.

And the funny thing is, we do X but with lower costs/higher margins than existing companies A, B and C because Y is actually a compelling pitch...

True. We like to say that Lemonade is the oldest new idea! I think that's what the sharing economy is all about, using technology to revive modes of social interaction that used to be commonplace.

Thats a great way of looking at the sharing economy. Once upon a time I asked my neighbor for a cup of sugar and they obliged, if even begrudgingly. Nowadays I pay a task rabbit $35 to get me a cup of sugar.

I'm not sure whether you are rich or joking.

A task rabbit? Is that what you call a subordinate at your office? Am I totally missing this?

I had no idea... I thought it was sarcasm.

> We like to say that Lemonade is the oldest new idea!

I think that the OP is drawing issue with the fact that the title described it as "the world's first P2P insurance."

What are you 'sharing' exactly? When did this word get redefined by corporations to mean charging a fee for a service?

Charging a fee for a service while sidestepping regulations and taxation. Also known as "disruption".

What is Lemonade's relationship with Goldman Sachs?

Is that a bad thing? It just means that it's an existing market, done better. Your comment reminds me a lot of the first criticism of the iPod "less space than a jukebox" or the guy who berated Dropbox by calling it a dumb GUI to rsync.

Yeah, who needs Uber when you can hail a cab in one swift motion

It's a bad thing when someone pretends it is a new thing.

Statefarm is owned by its policy holders.