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When creating a business, there is this old choice between bootstrapping and venture capitalists. The former forces you to squeeze every penny into gaining tra

When creating a business, there is this old choice between bootstrapping and venture capitalists. The former forces you to squeeze every penny into gaining traction in the market, as becoming profitable is hard, and your cash reserves limit your ability to advertise. The latter gives you the means to grow very fast and to gain experience from people who have played the game countless times, but it encourages reaching an exit (either by selling the company or through an IPO). It sounds like you favor bootstrapping. > build business garages where people go with an idea and they've been given a cheaper way to expand their business on their own and see if they can actually make it That was the idea behind Kima15 [0], which was co-created by Xavier Niel, who is also behind Station F. It provided 150 K$ within 15 days in exchange for 15% of the company's shares at a post-money valuation of 1 M$. [0]: https://medium.com/kima-ventures/kima15-lessons-learnt-and-whats-next-a1a456800233 https://medium.com/kima-ventures/kima15-lessons-learnt-and-w...

K0SM0S 10y ago
I may be old (is 34 already old?) but to me a "startup" by definition is the latter in your post, VC-style funding aimed at hyper-scaling. Hence the "up", from the "start". Otherwise it's just a regular small business (most countries and stats institutes would have a specific name for these >10 employees companies, like "very small" business or whatever). There's confusion, imho, when we call any new company a startup just because it's operating in the tech industry (you can totally be a startup in any industry, so long as it has the potential to scale up dramatically). You can be a regular small business even in tech, you can be a startup-er in food. This is a 2x2 matrix. Also, funding can take many forms, e.g. some startups being groomed by corporations (I know HP did that sometimes, with former employees). You still get the big money and obligations, and you already have one major future client; but nowhere near the same level of nonsensical buzzing.

K0SM0S 10y ago

I may be old (is 34 already old?) but to me a "startup" by definition is the latter in your post, VC-style funding aimed at hyper-scaling. Hence the "up", from the "start". Otherwise it's just a regular small business (most countries and stats institutes would have a specific name for these >10 employees companies, like "very small" business or whatever). There's confusion, imho, when we call any new company a startup just because it's operating in the tech industry (you can totally be a startup in any industry, so long as it has the potential to scale up dramatically). You can be a regular small business even in tech, you can be a startup-er in food. This is a 2x2 matrix. Also, funding can take many forms, e.g. some startups being groomed by corporations (I know HP did that sometimes, with former employees). You still get the big money and obligations, and you already have one major future client; but nowhere near the same level of nonsensical buzzing.