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Can we please stop calling billion dollar companies startups?
by imh 11y ago
Can we please stop calling billion dollar companies startups?
- loceng 11y agoWe should just call them people's projects..
- jkestner 11y agoNot until their P/E first returns a positive number.
- imh 11y agoDoes that make twitter, amazon, and tesla still startups? I swear I'm not cherrypicking data. Those, plus google and facebook, are the first big companies I thought to look up P/E on. Public startup seems like a contradiction. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/twtr/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/twtr/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/pe-ratio I agree company size is a bad metric, but there's something weird about calling some of these huge companies with thousands of employees startups (the unicorns, I mean, not amazon and twitter).
- jkestner 11y agoWas tongue-in-cheek, but that's why I used the word "first". All three have turned a quarterly profit at some point (Twitter only if you discount losses from stock-based compensation). Twitter and Tesla have not yet turned on the money spigot, so you could argue they're still startups. Amazon is a grown-ass business that can turn the spigot on anytime it wants to impress investors.
- imh 11y agoAh, I couldn't tell how you meant it. Poe's law and all that.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nickpsecurity 11y agoI'm with you. It's ridiculous. I call hitting a billion dollars a good finish unless I'm wanting to gamble. A start-up are people with a plan, some money, determination, and maybe some customers/users. They're just getting started with no clue if they're going to make it or they've existed a while with uncertain business model. The $10-100+ mil club are typically established companies still growing, still adapting, and with huge valuations.