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> The word has a broader meaning that encompasses other kinds of strategies Does it really? I don't actually accept that, but around here at least, this is a c

> The word has a broader meaning that encompasses other kinds of strategies Does it really? I don't actually accept that, but around here at least, this is a common enough definition that you should call it out when you're going to deviate from it: A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

idlewords 10y ago
The word is a regular English word that has a widely accepted meeting outside this message board, and had that meaning for decades before Paul Graham tried to redefine it. [https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/start-up https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/start-up] Litigating what the correct meaning of "startup" is on HN is not productive, but we should recognize that not everyone agrees with Graham's redefinition, and therefore arguments that cite his essay are begging the question.
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  > Litigating what the correct meaning of "startup" is on HN is not productive I disagree. It's really really really hard to build a business and make it grow. Any logical tools we can use to cut down on the space of strategies and goals worth pursuing is worth its weight in gold. Coming to more restrictive definitions of "startup" does exactly that. More prosaically, if we don't do it ourselves, investors are just going to do it for us and leave us in the dark as to what their real criteria for funding is. We want them to be a part of the conversation because bootstrapping everything sucks. Being needlessly inclusive hurts everybody.
  - idlewords 10y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your second paragraph. Could you explain further what you mean, especially about being 'needlessly inclusive'?
    - vinceguidry 10y ago
      So, let's say you're a would-be entrepreneur looking to start a business and run an enterprise and get rich. How do you know where to begin? If you don't have connections to help, you're stuck with only your own understandings, your own resources, and your success or failure will be mostly attributed to luck. Cutting down on this luck factor is the problem the startup landscape is trying to solve. We can provide two things to would-be entrepreneurs, information and resources. Information can obviously be free, but resources have to be limited. It does the industry, the collection of people providing information and resources, the most good if following the information, which they can get for free, leads easily and directly into provisioning of resources. A more transparent process makes it more democratic and a better route for real social change. So we want to constrain the definition of words like 'startup' so that they better conform to what investors are looking for in ventures to fund. Sure, anybody can use the term any way they want, but for this community, 'everybody starting a venture is a startup' does nothing to help the would-be entrepreneurs to do the right things they need to do to get investment. It's too inclusive, it does not provide a pathway for people that want to join the community to gain real, material help with their venture. It needs to be a useful tool of exclusion.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Even in technology, which is just a slice of all of (say) American enterprise, it's hardly an accepted norm that new business starts must be funded by investors. What's instead happened is that people who pay attention to message boards like this are afflicted with a kind of snow blindness from all the random businesses that do get funded by third party investors. It is true: if you want to be funded by third parties, you will need to build a certain kind of business, and that business will look a lot like what Paul Graham defines as a startup. There's a lot of debate about whether and why this is, but the math is straightforward: if you want to take a few million dollars of O.P.M. to build a business with, you need to aim at the moon and hit it for those investors to have a viable business model. What people who don't build businesses on O.P.M. object to is the notion that O.P.M. is the only way to start a viable company. So: sure. If you want to educate people who plan on building VC-funded companies, you're right. It's a good idea not to delude them into thinking they can take a few $MM and grow organically. They should probably follow most of the Paul Graham playbook. But more companies should reflect about whether they want to take a few $MM to begin with. Many people would be happier if they didn't. A lot --- most, in fact --- of the companies who do take the money have fooled themselves, and are frittering away the single most valuable resource they have (their time) on companies that have less than a crap-shot chance at success. Craps works extremely well for investors. It's not so great for founders.
- jessedhillon 10y ago
  You're the only one litigating the meaning of words. Anytime you find yourself providing a link to a dictionary, you should consider that you're being pedantic and have no point. That's certainly what it looks like to me. I'm not providing a link to a PG essay because it coincidentally agrees with my position -- there's a big orange "Y" at the top of this page, and it's not there arbitrarily. If you're having a conversation on HN about startups, there's an underlying culture which you need to be aware of. Demanding people justify a shared understanding of a term's meaning by challenging whether or not it doesn't mean something else is arrogant -- have you considered that you are ignorant of the basic terms of the discussion, as it occurs on HN? There are other conversations where your definition might be right. That has nothing to do with this conversation.
  - mbesto 10y ago
    Relax. The GP's point is that definitions are important and litigating the definition of the word startup has been tried before and doesn't end up benefiting anyone. The logic flows as such: 1. People making judgements about startups 2. Not everyone can agree what the definition of a startup is (even if the benevolent dictator has stated their opinion on the matter) 3. Therefore it's incredibly difficult to agree or disagree about judgements of startups because the underlying definition is not clear You may claim that #3 should be pg's definition "because its HN/YC", but not all HN members agree.
    - jessedhillon 10y ago
      Okay, here's the other thing though -- unless you use the definition I'm providing, the article linked to here about "playing startup" doesn't make any sense. Unless someone genuinely doesn't understand that startup is being used in a narrower sense, there's no reason to raise this objection. It's like objecting to a discussion about angels (the investors) because the word typically refers to angelic beings, or the baseball team.
  - idlewords 10y ago
    I realize that I'm defending vinegar-based sauces on a BBQ discussion board that is committed to tomato-based sauces, and run by a powerful tomato conglomerate. But I've been here a long time (just like you), and my account predates Paul Graham's fatwa about startups. If he chooses to redefine other words in future essays, I reserve the right to link to the dictionary again. My goal is not to be obnoxious, but to keep the terms of debate open for people who have a more expansive view of what online businesses can look like, and what values might be important to their founders.

idlewords 10y ago

The word is a regular English word that has a widely accepted meeting outside this message board, and had that meaning for decades before Paul Graham tried to redefine it. [https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/start-up https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/start-up] Litigating what the correct meaning of "startup" is on HN is not productive, but we should recognize that not everyone agrees with Graham's redefinition, and therefore arguments that cite his essay are begging the question.

vinceguidry 10y ago
> Litigating what the correct meaning of "startup" is on HN is not productive I disagree. It's really really really hard to build a business and make it grow. Any logical tools we can use to cut down on the space of strategies and goals worth pursuing is worth its weight in gold. Coming to more restrictive definitions of "startup" does exactly that. More prosaically, if we don't do it ourselves, investors are just going to do it for us and leave us in the dark as to what their real criteria for funding is. We want them to be a part of the conversation because bootstrapping everything sucks. Being needlessly inclusive hurts everybody.
- idlewords 10y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your second paragraph. Could you explain further what you mean, especially about being 'needlessly inclusive'?
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    So, let's say you're a would-be entrepreneur looking to start a business and run an enterprise and get rich. How do you know where to begin? If you don't have connections to help, you're stuck with only your own understandings, your own resources, and your success or failure will be mostly attributed to luck. Cutting down on this luck factor is the problem the startup landscape is trying to solve. We can provide two things to would-be entrepreneurs, information and resources. Information can obviously be free, but resources have to be limited. It does the industry, the collection of people providing information and resources, the most good if following the information, which they can get for free, leads easily and directly into provisioning of resources. A more transparent process makes it more democratic and a better route for real social change. So we want to constrain the definition of words like 'startup' so that they better conform to what investors are looking for in ventures to fund. Sure, anybody can use the term any way they want, but for this community, 'everybody starting a venture is a startup' does nothing to help the would-be entrepreneurs to do the right things they need to do to get investment. It's too inclusive, it does not provide a pathway for people that want to join the community to gain real, material help with their venture. It needs to be a useful tool of exclusion.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Even in technology, which is just a slice of all of (say) American enterprise, it's hardly an accepted norm that new business starts must be funded by investors. What's instead happened is that people who pay attention to message boards like this are afflicted with a kind of snow blindness from all the random businesses that do get funded by third party investors. It is true: if you want to be funded by third parties, you will need to build a certain kind of business, and that business will look a lot like what Paul Graham defines as a startup. There's a lot of debate about whether and why this is, but the math is straightforward: if you want to take a few million dollars of O.P.M. to build a business with, you need to aim at the moon and hit it for those investors to have a viable business model. What people who don't build businesses on O.P.M. object to is the notion that O.P.M. is the only way to start a viable company. So: sure. If you want to educate people who plan on building VC-funded companies, you're right. It's a good idea not to delude them into thinking they can take a few $MM and grow organically. They should probably follow most of the Paul Graham playbook. But more companies should reflect about whether they want to take a few $MM to begin with. Many people would be happier if they didn't. A lot --- most, in fact --- of the companies who do take the money have fooled themselves, and are frittering away the single most valuable resource they have (their time) on companies that have less than a crap-shot chance at success. Craps works extremely well for investors. It's not so great for founders.
jessedhillon 10y ago
You're the only one litigating the meaning of words. Anytime you find yourself providing a link to a dictionary, you should consider that you're being pedantic and have no point. That's certainly what it looks like to me. I'm not providing a link to a PG essay because it coincidentally agrees with my position -- there's a big orange "Y" at the top of this page, and it's not there arbitrarily. If you're having a conversation on HN about startups, there's an underlying culture which you need to be aware of. Demanding people justify a shared understanding of a term's meaning by challenging whether or not it doesn't mean something else is arrogant -- have you considered that you are ignorant of the basic terms of the discussion, as it occurs on HN? There are other conversations where your definition might be right. That has nothing to do with this conversation.
- mbesto 10y ago
  Relax. The GP's point is that definitions are important and litigating the definition of the word startup has been tried before and doesn't end up benefiting anyone. The logic flows as such: 1. People making judgements about startups 2. Not everyone can agree what the definition of a startup is (even if the benevolent dictator has stated their opinion on the matter) 3. Therefore it's incredibly difficult to agree or disagree about judgements of startups because the underlying definition is not clear You may claim that #3 should be pg's definition "because its HN/YC", but not all HN members agree.
  - jessedhillon 10y ago
    Okay, here's the other thing though -- unless you use the definition I'm providing, the article linked to here about "playing startup" doesn't make any sense. Unless someone genuinely doesn't understand that startup is being used in a narrower sense, there's no reason to raise this objection. It's like objecting to a discussion about angels (the investors) because the word typically refers to angelic beings, or the baseball team.
- idlewords 10y ago
  I realize that I'm defending vinegar-based sauces on a BBQ discussion board that is committed to tomato-based sauces, and run by a powerful tomato conglomerate. But I've been here a long time (just like you), and my account predates Paul Graham's fatwa about startups. If he chooses to redefine other words in future essays, I reserve the right to link to the dictionary again. My goal is not to be obnoxious, but to keep the terms of debate open for people who have a more expansive view of what online businesses can look like, and what values might be important to their founders.