I think you both are arguing two different things. You seem to be saying that there are a lot of businesses, which will never be startups. While that's true,

I think you both are arguing two different things. You seem to be saying that there are a lot of businesses, which will never be startups. While that's true, they seem to be saying that being a startup is not an immutable trait of a company, but rather a phase, and that any side project or solo business could enter the startup phase at any time. Sure, most people wouldn't consider a law office to be a startup. Most people also wouldn't consider a consultancy like 37Signals a startup. Most people wouldn't consider a novel URL-ranking algorithm like Google's a startup, or any number of other projects or businesses that didn't begin as startups. That's not to say that a restaurant is likely to turn into a bootstrapped startup or anything. I think their main point was that not all startups started out with intentions of high growth. Your initial response was that "Solo entrepreneurs are not starting a startup, not as I (and most people) understand the term." To that, I think what they are saying is, "they could be." You could then argue that startups which aren't yet startups are outside the scope of the OP's original statement that, "For every Startup raising $X million in funding there are probably a thousand solo entrepreneurs bootstrapping their way into profitability." Because, when they do become a startup, then they'll be raising money just like everyone else. However, even that rebuttal would ignore all the startups that became startups aimed at high growth driven by profitability instead of raising millions at the outset. [1] Honestly, I think the reason funded startups get more media coverage than bootstrapped startups comes down to simple numbers. There is a large but finite amount of demand for news on successful startups. There aren't enough successful acquisitions, IPOs, or openly successful companies to fill the demand, so we have to dip into indicators of future success, such as funding, to satisfy the demand for news on interesting new businesses. However, as many startups as there are getting funding, there are even more side projects and small businesses being started. Most aren't successful yet, and if they are, they're too busy being successful to proactively reach out to the media with an interesting story. In other words, I think funding rounds are just an easy source/filter for journalists to publish on, and which require little effort editorializing to be considered interesting by the masses. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/01/invisible-unicorns-35-big-companies-that-started-with-little-or-no-money/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/01/invisible-unicorns-35-big-...