4 ms·
What differentiates a startup from a normal business? A standup desk?
by mmgutz 9y ago
What differentiates a startup from a normal business? A standup desk?
- sandworm101 9y agoPart of my job is telling clients to abandon the startup mentality. When you have 100 employees, two buildings and a defense contract, you can no longer play fast with regulations. That rep from the japanese air force (hypo) wont forgive a lack of compliance paperwork because you needed room for an arcade.
- wtvanhest 9y agoPing pong tables. You just need one ping pong table and a billion dollar market and you are good to go!
- nostrademons 9y ago"The ability to grow really fast." -- Paul Graham More specifically, we normally think of startups as businesses where you can do the work once and then sell it multiple times, while in a normal small business or consulting shop, you have to do the work for each customer. There's a pretty big grey area - enterprise software companies often need a significant amount of customization for each customer, while with the sharing/gig economy, whether you can "do the work once and sell it multiple times" depends on whether you consider "the work" to be the service the customer is paying for or the service of connecting an independent contractor to potential customers. But it seems to work pretty well as a functional definition.
- CM30 9y agoI think it's just as simple as a company that can grow really fast, usually backed by some form of venture capital. Otherwise you'd be saying a simple product/service bysiness is a startup, since someone selling a forum script or web hosting is also 'doing the work once and selling it multiple times'.
- Avshalom 9y ago"temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model" -- Steve Blank. That said I pretty much agree with the others: ping pong tables and negative unit economics make a start up.
- jnordwick 9y agoAnd losing a lot of money with a plan to monetize.
- idlewords 9y agoRunning at a loss with other people's money.