Are startup studios really just copycats?
Probably the strongest prejudice against startup studios is that these companies only produce copycats, and are unable to come up with innovative ideas. Is this really true, or should we shatter the stigma?
(If you are not sure what startup studios are, check slide 3 of the embedded presentation.)
Probably this all started with Rocket Internet, the (in)famous german e-commerce giant, which made a name for itself for copying already successful companies and build localized versions. But even if the label is true for one, does that apply to all the organizations using the startup studio model?
Recently I released a study, in which I looked at 51 startup studios and 212 of their portfolio companies. What I found, is intriguing…
Source of my data was CrunchBase and MatterMark. In both, there are categories and labels for the business model and market of the companies. If you look at this data, you can see that even though e-commerce (and mobile) are the most common categories of the startup studio portfolio companies, there is a wide variety of other sectors.
Also if you sample check some of the studios, you will find unique models, far far from the simple copy-paste approach:
- For example New Mexico Angels Startup Factory focuses on commercializing University research.
- There’s one studio in Italy who also do something similar.
- Look at the portfolio of Science-Inc, and tell me which one is a copycat?
I included the full list of studios and portfolio companies, also some charts about which market they are exploring, in the full version: https://gum.co/sssp1
Also, what constitutes a copycat, is also a rather philosophical question. Was Google, Apple or Facebook a copycat, when they started to build the n+1 search engine, mp3 player and social network? Maybe they were, but they each did something unique with their product or business model, that made them stand out from competition. Same goes for any startup studio company — if they create something that users love (proven by traction, especially revenue), then they did something good.
“There is nothing new under the sun”, and I think this is especially true for companies. Chances are, if you do something, there were already a myriad of people who did something similar before you.
What matters most, is that these companies create value for their clients, shareholders and employees.
