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A comment on ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Francisco Soon. Parent comment

Re:ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Fr... by jellicle on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @03:42PM (#4387798)
I think there's a qualitative difference between a business model that can sustain itself and one that relies on rich backers to dump money into it every year, forever.

Isn't HN usually full of people saying you have to figure out what customers will pay for (meaning, what customers will pay more for than it costs you to provide)? Bike-sharing is not one of those things. End-user customers will not pay you more than it costs to provide.

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Re:ViaCycle (YC S12) Is A Zipcar For Bikes, Coming To San Fr... by SomeCallMeTim on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @03:45PM (#4387811)
"Customers" includes businesses -- and governments, for that matter.

A lot of successful start-ups don't sell to consumers at all. And kazevedo comments that they are in fact structured as a B2B start-up. [1]

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4387770

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