6 ms·

Stop Calling Projects Startups

165 points by dariusmonsef 16y ago

Smirnoff 16y ago
I think every person who has built a product has the right to call it a startup. And honestly it doesn't matter what you call it. It is definitely better to call a project a startup than to call a startup as a startup, which has never delivered a product. Your LLC with no product might be a startup but it is far away from being a real project. And real project with real product is what matters to me.
mindcrime 16y ago
I agree, there are a lot of people using the term "startup" when all they've done is push an app to the Apple appstore or whatever. And if I could wave a magic wand and change things, I'd have people stop doing that. But I'm guessing that this particular ship has sailed, and that it's going to be hard to get people to quit using the term that way. I'm just glad that one of your conditions was "has registered a business entity for a specific project" so that I can feel good about my own startup! We haven't raised money or generated revenue yet, but the goal is absolutely build a real, profitable, world-changing company.
- bmull 16y ago
  Registering a company is such a pain in the ass, that if you're going to do it, you're at least serious about this project existing for a while and you're willing to put the time and effort into making it official. That shows enough dedication in my opinion :)
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    PITA? Go to any CPA, give her $200, your LLC is done in an hour. How is that a PITA? Although maybe it's harder in your state. Indiana's LLC law is so easy you don't even have to register who owns the LLC - just name a managing director and you're good to go.
Vivtek 16y ago
I'd have to say if you have a credible plan to generate revenue, and are implementing that plan, that's a startup. The rest of it is just means to that end (i.e. parts of your particular plan). Overall point seems pretty well-taken, though.
- bmull 16y ago
  That's a great point. I'm going to add that.
- dancavallaro11 16y ago
  Sounds like Twitter hasn't even reached startup status, then.
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    Well, really, I have to agree. I mean, they've been hanging fire on 2. ???? for a very long time now, and probably should have given more thought to the question of project vs. startup before now. Unless you just want to consider their equity revenue, which is basically how the 90's worked anyway. "End of the business cycle" my ass. I'm still mad about that.
cj 16y ago
Yeah, calling ourselves CEOs of projects was always one of my pet peeves.
latch 16y ago
For me the line is clear: you work/have a startup when it's your primary "job". I work at a bank from 8-6, then work on my projects evenings and weekends. Pretty simple.
rokhayakebe 16y ago
Stop telling people what not to do. Wikipedia gives the following as a description for a startup "A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets.". So yes, a two hour project can be a startup, just like a lemonade stand.
- bmull 16y ago
  This is a great description, and I really appreciate you posting it. I might update my blog with it, and really should have looked at Wikipedia too. Thanks. You make my point perfectly. Wikipedia is very clear to call it a "company." That's what I'm saying. Two hour projects aren't companies (unless they file to be an entity, which I believe makes it a startup - 3rd qualification bullet in the post).
  - ohashi 16y ago
    Suppose we could change that definition, it is wikipedia after all.
  - danielharan 16y ago
    Actually, the Wikipedia definition is also pretty useless. What's a "limited operating history"? Steve Blank put it best: "a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model" You could be searching for a repeatable and scalable business model in a week-end, which would be awesome. Most people don't, and I find it really irritating that these projects get called startups.
  - hisabness 16y ago
    i guess a computer scientist isn't a computer scientist unless he or she has a piece of paper to prove it
- kingsidharth 16y ago
  Paradox: You are actually telling him "not to do something".
- 16y ago
andrewheins 16y ago
How does a "startup" differ from any other business? You write a business plan, invest some saved-up capital, work your ass off, charge for your product and hopefully bring in more money than you spend. To me, the only thing "startup" seems to imply is that you don't have a real business plan and a way to actually make money the way a "normal" business would, which doesn't seem that great.
MatthewPhillips 16y ago
Along the same lines, can we stop calling all coding "hacking". Unless you are accessing features of an API that it doesn't intend you to access, you are not hacking.
- leon_ 16y ago
  I'm with you on this one - but this is a pretty unpopular opinion on "Hacker" News. Just let the kids call themselves hackers if it makes them feel better. It's a pretty fine idiot filter, too. If someone introduces himself as a hacker you know directly where to put him :)
- onan_barbarian 16y ago
  The second sentence is not supported by any of the historical uses of the word "hacking", whether it's the original one (a vaguely defined definition involving deep knowledge and stretching the limits of computing systems) or the debased one ("breaking into computers"). Many of the earliest 'hacks' occurred well in advance of any defined APIs for anything but are still clearly recognizable as hacks (e.g. some of the clever tricks in HAKMEM, for example). Dividing a number by a constant but multiplying by a magic number is a hack, for example, but no API has been violated here. That's a shame, because recognizing the distinction between "mere coding" and "hacking" would be a good idea.
melling 16y ago
Call your project whatever you want. Spend less time on HN, and don't waste energy writing blogs that draw lines in the sand. Just keep making forward progress on something of value.
michaelpinto 16y ago
People who have the time to blog about terminology aren't in a startup.
- bmull 16y ago
  That's right. I'm not. I sold my startup last year and am working for the acquirer. I'm building stuff on the side, and having fun. But those are projects.
rewind 16y ago
I find that when it comes to these sorts of arguments that the people who spend their time telling you what they think are usually the people who care too much what other people think. Startup vs. Project? Computer Programmer vs. Software Engineer? CEO vs. Single Founder? It's all so completely irrelevant to who you are or what you're doing. It's just noise.
- fourstar 16y ago
  The #1 reason I have stopped actively coming to HN. Too many self-entitled opinionated "authors" telling people what they should or shouldn't be doing (especially when it's not even technically relevant). Or should they be called "writers"?
  - keyle 16y ago
    Yes there are a lot of bold statements written as a blog posts going around, which are mostly for the purpose of ranting and self-promotion. It's like a bolded tweet.
  - jberryman 16y ago
    i feel the same way. like this place is a toxic pit of narcissism that leaves me feeling icky and uninspired.
  - Alex3917 16y ago
    You know what the difference between an author and a writer is? An author writes.
    - derefr 16y ago
      I thought the difference was "an author is published." That doesn't translate into the post-NYC-book-publishing-industry era, though, because "an author is read" doesn't convey the same idea—you can be read because of viral marketing effects, but usually you're only published because an editor thinks your content is an investment that will make their publisher money.
newobj 16y ago
I think I'm going to start employing policy debate's stock issues paradigm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_issues) to all proposals I see on HN. So, with that: Solvency: Flow that through for the aff, no argument. Harms: Affirmative fails to illustrate any harms inherent in the status quo. The plan should be thrown out on these grounds alone. Inherency: Affirmative only proposes a semantic clarification to a sub genre of internet message boards; no actual policy change is necessary to implement this. Affirmative plan does not demonstrate that status quo cannot solve the unspecified harms on its own. Flow this negative. Topicality: No argument, flow aff. Significance: Without any harms, the aff cannot claim any significance to their plan. Flow this negative.
techiferous 16y ago
Here's the distinction I use: If I'm building a business (focusing on money, market, customers, etc.) I call it a startup. If I'm building a web app only (focusing on technology) I call it a side project.
JoshKalkbrenner 16y ago
What category, if any, exists between 'startup' and 'project'. We registered an entity, work full time (quit good paying gigs 8 months ago),and raised small seed but have not earned much in terms of revenue. Comments such as "how much money have you earned?", "...so you're not earning a salary?", "so you're not working" might make your 'startup' feel like a hobby. Fingers up! We love it! www.SpotBanks.com
- Vivtek 16y ago
  That would be "startup".
Pahalial 16y ago
How exactly is it disrespectful to other startups to call your side-project a startup? This is the key assumption involved in this article, and it is not actually addressed in the slightest. I would argue it is far from disrespectful: the funded startups know who they are; likewise with the YC/incubator startups; likewise with the full-time startups. I really don't see how it's disrespectful to them to call your weekend project a startup. Do you perhaps mean dilution of the term? I could perhaps come around to that, but that's a far cry from any notion of respect; in fact, I would argue that you are diluting the very idea of 'respect' by applying it to this scenario. Et tu, bmull?
- bmull 16y ago
  Fair point, and you're right, what I meant was that by referring to something that isn't a startup as a startup, I think it hurts the term startup. I know so many people who have risked a ton to run a startup, and I'm seeing frustration in the community when someone throws together something quickly, releases it, and says "Here's my new startup" without really dedicating themselves to it.
arbales 16y ago
Seriously — I'm insanely bored with the bajillion "CEO's" I meet per week.
- BenSS 16y ago
  Ditto. I've been using Founder/Co-Founder instead, which is a lot more accurate.
wmboy 16y ago
A startup is a business - that's what it's short for isn't it, "start up business"? So a project is a project until it is something you want to turn into a business. Then you can call it a startup.
jeffreyrusso 16y ago
I don't think I have a place calling other people out for the word they use to describe what they are working on. That being said, I've started lots of projects, but nothing I would call a startup. Some have generated revenue, many have not, but none were really sustainable revenue generators that I saw a future in. I personally want to reserve the startup label for a project that evolves to show its potential, and that I'm passionate about and ready to fully devote myself to.
Stealx 16y ago
Can we also stop calling every entrepreneur with a "successful" exit an expert and someone whose every word we need to live by... some are just lucky, if not most.
kingsidharth 16y ago
Spot on! I like to think of stages as below: Ideas > Experiment > Project > Startup Not all of my ideas follow the model, but those are the stages I like to think of. Note to self: A blog post expanding one each satge.
- bmull 16y ago
  Great idea! I like that model.
prayag 16y ago
Exactly the opposite. Start calling your projects start-ups. If you don't take them seriously nobody will. Every line of code you write, every project you do should be done with a purpose of building something great and making money off of it. Aimless projects are abound but when you start calling a project a start-up it changes your perspective. It means you are ready to work hard on it. It means you are ready to spend countless nights tinkering with it. It means you start caring for your users. Projects are worthless, same projects when looked at from the point-of-view of a start-up look like an opportunity.
nikcub 16y ago
"I'm not writing this to be a dick." glad we cleared that up, saves me leaving a comment
BasDirks 16y ago
To summarize: "Stop calling projects startups because finally I feel special in life".
dasil003 16y ago
I was going to just leave yet another comment here about what a pointless and inconsequential rant this is. The title "out of respect for people actually launching startups" is incredibly narcissistic. I don't give people respect because what they do fits some meme, it's about specifics. But all that aside, I actually do agree that calling projects startups is a bad idea because it's not a subtle semantic difference—they are completely different things! A project in this case really means an application, and a startup is a company. Calling an application a startup is like calling the internet a series of tubes, it just betrays a fundamental imprecision that is anathema to the engineering instinct. Note that this distinction has nothing to do with raising capital or how self-important you are. You can run a business part-time, and if it's early-stage then call it a startup. However if you're just putting some app out there without any kind of business plan, then it really does sound silly to call it a startup.
nutanc 16y ago
So basically, you have attacked the whole http://startupweekend.org http://startupweekend.org philosophy :).Incidentally we actually had a discussion along these lines at hackerstreet sometime back http://hackerstreet.in/item?id=5076 http://hackerstreet.in/item?id=5076 Personally, does it matter what someone calls their idea, project or startup? I am sure, some one will call their weekend idea as a startup only if they are planning on monetizing it. Projects are different. We have hundreds of thousands of projects on sourceforge and other sites.They do not call themselves as startups.
DeepSeaRaisin 16y ago
Basically, I'll know my project is a startup when I feel like it is a startup, regardless of whether someone else agrees. Clearly this method breaks down when taken to the extremes, but for my purposes, I'm fine with it. The startup term is very muddy and I have seen it applied to big projects, little projects, big organizations, one to two person coders, well funded, no funding--etc. Like art, I don't view its lack of a clear definition to be a bad thing. There might be a number of shared characteristics that are generally found in art (or a startup), but their absence in part or in whole doesn't necessarily mean the piece isn't art or the project/group doesn't qualify as a startup. If we can draw a clear line for the purposes of labeling something or something a startup, that's fine and I'd be inclined to accept it if it's universally accepted. I just hope that it doesn't serve to delegitimize people's work if they disagree with one's assertion that X is not a startup.
Johngibb 16y ago
To go along with the recent post "My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk." (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322696)... Who cares? Let's just embrace the fact that a simple side project could very well turn into a profitable business in the field we're all operating in? How does a rant bring more to the table than someone calling a side project a startup? (whatever the distinction may be)
ebaysucks 16y ago
Stop Writing Linkbait Articles. Come to think about it, that would be an awesome linkbait article.
ldh 16y ago
I guess my reading HN is a bit incongruous with this opinion, but I'm kind of sick of the fetishization of startups in general.

165 points by dariusmonsef 16y ago

I think every person who has built a product has the right to call it a startup. And honestly it doesn't matter what you call it. It is definitely better to call a project a startup than to call a startup as a startup, which has never delivered a product. Your LLC with no product might be a startup but it is far away from being a real project. And real project with real product is what matters to me.

mindcrime 16y ago

I agree, there are a lot of people using the term "startup" when all they've done is push an app to the Apple appstore or whatever. And if I could wave a magic wand and change things, I'd have people stop doing that. But I'm guessing that this particular ship has sailed, and that it's going to be hard to get people to quit using the term that way. I'm just glad that one of your conditions was "has registered a business entity for a specific project" so that I can feel good about my own startup! We haven't raised money or generated revenue yet, but the goal is absolutely build a real, profitable, world-changing company.

bmull 16y ago
Registering a company is such a pain in the ass, that if you're going to do it, you're at least serious about this project existing for a while and you're willing to put the time and effort into making it official. That shows enough dedication in my opinion :)
- Vivtek 16y ago
  PITA? Go to any CPA, give her $200, your LLC is done in an hour. How is that a PITA? Although maybe it's harder in your state. Indiana's LLC law is so easy you don't even have to register who owns the LLC - just name a managing director and you're good to go.

Vivtek 16y ago

I'd have to say if you have a credible plan to generate revenue, and are implementing that plan, that's a startup. The rest of it is just means to that end (i.e. parts of your particular plan). Overall point seems pretty well-taken, though.

bmull 16y ago
That's a great point. I'm going to add that.
dancavallaro11 16y ago
Sounds like Twitter hasn't even reached startup status, then.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  Well, really, I have to agree. I mean, they've been hanging fire on 2. ???? for a very long time now, and probably should have given more thought to the question of project vs. startup before now. Unless you just want to consider their equity revenue, which is basically how the 90's worked anyway. "End of the business cycle" my ass. I'm still mad about that.

cj 16y ago

Yeah, calling ourselves CEOs of projects was always one of my pet peeves.

latch 16y ago

For me the line is clear: you work/have a startup when it's your primary "job". I work at a bank from 8-6, then work on my projects evenings and weekends. Pretty simple.

rokhayakebe 16y ago

Stop telling people what not to do. Wikipedia gives the following as a description for a startup "A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets.". So yes, a two hour project can be a startup, just like a lemonade stand.

bmull 16y ago
This is a great description, and I really appreciate you posting it. I might update my blog with it, and really should have looked at Wikipedia too. Thanks. You make my point perfectly. Wikipedia is very clear to call it a "company." That's what I'm saying. Two hour projects aren't companies (unless they file to be an entity, which I believe makes it a startup - 3rd qualification bullet in the post).
- ohashi 16y ago
  Suppose we could change that definition, it is wikipedia after all.
- danielharan 16y ago
  Actually, the Wikipedia definition is also pretty useless. What's a "limited operating history"? Steve Blank put it best: "a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model" You could be searching for a repeatable and scalable business model in a week-end, which would be awesome. Most people don't, and I find it really irritating that these projects get called startups.
- hisabness 16y ago
  i guess a computer scientist isn't a computer scientist unless he or she has a piece of paper to prove it
kingsidharth 16y ago
Paradox: You are actually telling him "not to do something".
16y ago

andrewheins 16y ago

How does a "startup" differ from any other business? You write a business plan, invest some saved-up capital, work your ass off, charge for your product and hopefully bring in more money than you spend. To me, the only thing "startup" seems to imply is that you don't have a real business plan and a way to actually make money the way a "normal" business would, which doesn't seem that great.

MatthewPhillips 16y ago

Along the same lines, can we stop calling all coding "hacking". Unless you are accessing features of an API that it doesn't intend you to access, you are not hacking.

leon_ 16y ago
I'm with you on this one - but this is a pretty unpopular opinion on "Hacker" News. Just let the kids call themselves hackers if it makes them feel better. It's a pretty fine idiot filter, too. If someone introduces himself as a hacker you know directly where to put him :)
onan_barbarian 16y ago
The second sentence is not supported by any of the historical uses of the word "hacking", whether it's the original one (a vaguely defined definition involving deep knowledge and stretching the limits of computing systems) or the debased one ("breaking into computers"). Many of the earliest 'hacks' occurred well in advance of any defined APIs for anything but are still clearly recognizable as hacks (e.g. some of the clever tricks in HAKMEM, for example). Dividing a number by a constant but multiplying by a magic number is a hack, for example, but no API has been violated here. That's a shame, because recognizing the distinction between "mere coding" and "hacking" would be a good idea.

melling 16y ago

Call your project whatever you want. Spend less time on HN, and don't waste energy writing blogs that draw lines in the sand. Just keep making forward progress on something of value.

michaelpinto 16y ago

People who have the time to blog about terminology aren't in a startup.

bmull 16y ago
That's right. I'm not. I sold my startup last year and am working for the acquirer. I'm building stuff on the side, and having fun. But those are projects.

rewind 16y ago

I find that when it comes to these sorts of arguments that the people who spend their time telling you what they think are usually the people who care too much what other people think. Startup vs. Project? Computer Programmer vs. Software Engineer? CEO vs. Single Founder? It's all so completely irrelevant to who you are or what you're doing. It's just noise.

fourstar 16y ago
The #1 reason I have stopped actively coming to HN. Too many self-entitled opinionated "authors" telling people what they should or shouldn't be doing (especially when it's not even technically relevant). Or should they be called "writers"?
- keyle 16y ago
  Yes there are a lot of bold statements written as a blog posts going around, which are mostly for the purpose of ranting and self-promotion. It's like a bolded tweet.
- jberryman 16y ago
  i feel the same way. like this place is a toxic pit of narcissism that leaves me feeling icky and uninspired.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  You know what the difference between an author and a writer is? An author writes.
  - derefr 16y ago
    I thought the difference was "an author is published." That doesn't translate into the post-NYC-book-publishing-industry era, though, because "an author is read" doesn't convey the same idea—you can be read because of viral marketing effects, but usually you're only published because an editor thinks your content is an investment that will make their publisher money.

newobj 16y ago

I think I'm going to start employing policy debate's stock issues paradigm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_issues) to all proposals I see on HN. So, with that: Solvency: Flow that through for the aff, no argument. Harms: Affirmative fails to illustrate any harms inherent in the status quo. The plan should be thrown out on these grounds alone. Inherency: Affirmative only proposes a semantic clarification to a sub genre of internet message boards; no actual policy change is necessary to implement this. Affirmative plan does not demonstrate that status quo cannot solve the unspecified harms on its own. Flow this negative. Topicality: No argument, flow aff. Significance: Without any harms, the aff cannot claim any significance to their plan. Flow this negative.

techiferous 16y ago

Here's the distinction I use: If I'm building a business (focusing on money, market, customers, etc.) I call it a startup. If I'm building a web app only (focusing on technology) I call it a side project.

JoshKalkbrenner 16y ago

What category, if any, exists between 'startup' and 'project'. We registered an entity, work full time (quit good paying gigs 8 months ago),and raised small seed but have not earned much in terms of revenue. Comments such as "how much money have you earned?", "...so you're not earning a salary?", "so you're not working" might make your 'startup' feel like a hobby. Fingers up! We love it! www.SpotBanks.com

Vivtek 16y ago
That would be "startup".

Pahalial 16y ago

How exactly is it disrespectful to other startups to call your side-project a startup? This is the key assumption involved in this article, and it is not actually addressed in the slightest. I would argue it is far from disrespectful: the funded startups know who they are; likewise with the YC/incubator startups; likewise with the full-time startups. I really don't see how it's disrespectful to them to call your weekend project a startup. Do you perhaps mean dilution of the term? I could perhaps come around to that, but that's a far cry from any notion of respect; in fact, I would argue that you are diluting the very idea of 'respect' by applying it to this scenario. Et tu, bmull?

bmull 16y ago
Fair point, and you're right, what I meant was that by referring to something that isn't a startup as a startup, I think it hurts the term startup. I know so many people who have risked a ton to run a startup, and I'm seeing frustration in the community when someone throws together something quickly, releases it, and says "Here's my new startup" without really dedicating themselves to it.

arbales 16y ago

Seriously — I'm insanely bored with the bajillion "CEO's" I meet per week.

BenSS 16y ago
Ditto. I've been using Founder/Co-Founder instead, which is a lot more accurate.

wmboy 16y ago

A startup is a business - that's what it's short for isn't it, "start up business"? So a project is a project until it is something you want to turn into a business. Then you can call it a startup.

jeffreyrusso 16y ago

I don't think I have a place calling other people out for the word they use to describe what they are working on. That being said, I've started lots of projects, but nothing I would call a startup. Some have generated revenue, many have not, but none were really sustainable revenue generators that I saw a future in. I personally want to reserve the startup label for a project that evolves to show its potential, and that I'm passionate about and ready to fully devote myself to.

Stealx 16y ago

Can we also stop calling every entrepreneur with a "successful" exit an expert and someone whose every word we need to live by... some are just lucky, if not most.

kingsidharth 16y ago

Spot on! I like to think of stages as below: Ideas > Experiment > Project > Startup Not all of my ideas follow the model, but those are the stages I like to think of. Note to self: A blog post expanding one each satge.

bmull 16y ago
Great idea! I like that model.

prayag 16y ago

Exactly the opposite. Start calling your projects start-ups. If you don't take them seriously nobody will. Every line of code you write, every project you do should be done with a purpose of building something great and making money off of it. Aimless projects are abound but when you start calling a project a start-up it changes your perspective. It means you are ready to work hard on it. It means you are ready to spend countless nights tinkering with it. It means you start caring for your users. Projects are worthless, same projects when looked at from the point-of-view of a start-up look like an opportunity.

nikcub 16y ago

"I'm not writing this to be a dick." glad we cleared that up, saves me leaving a comment

BasDirks 16y ago

To summarize: "Stop calling projects startups because finally I feel special in life".

dasil003 16y ago

I was going to just leave yet another comment here about what a pointless and inconsequential rant this is. The title "out of respect for people actually launching startups" is incredibly narcissistic. I don't give people respect because what they do fits some meme, it's about specifics. But all that aside, I actually do agree that calling projects startups is a bad idea because it's not a subtle semantic difference—they are completely different things! A project in this case really means an application, and a startup is a company. Calling an application a startup is like calling the internet a series of tubes, it just betrays a fundamental imprecision that is anathema to the engineering instinct. Note that this distinction has nothing to do with raising capital or how self-important you are. You can run a business part-time, and if it's early-stage then call it a startup. However if you're just putting some app out there without any kind of business plan, then it really does sound silly to call it a startup.

nutanc 16y ago

So basically, you have attacked the whole http://startupweekend.org http://startupweekend.org philosophy :).Incidentally we actually had a discussion along these lines at hackerstreet sometime back http://hackerstreet.in/item?id=5076 http://hackerstreet.in/item?id=5076 Personally, does it matter what someone calls their idea, project or startup? I am sure, some one will call their weekend idea as a startup only if they are planning on monetizing it. Projects are different. We have hundreds of thousands of projects on sourceforge and other sites.They do not call themselves as startups.

DeepSeaRaisin 16y ago

Basically, I'll know my project is a startup when I feel like it is a startup, regardless of whether someone else agrees. Clearly this method breaks down when taken to the extremes, but for my purposes, I'm fine with it. The startup term is very muddy and I have seen it applied to big projects, little projects, big organizations, one to two person coders, well funded, no funding--etc. Like art, I don't view its lack of a clear definition to be a bad thing. There might be a number of shared characteristics that are generally found in art (or a startup), but their absence in part or in whole doesn't necessarily mean the piece isn't art or the project/group doesn't qualify as a startup. If we can draw a clear line for the purposes of labeling something or something a startup, that's fine and I'd be inclined to accept it if it's universally accepted. I just hope that it doesn't serve to delegitimize people's work if they disagree with one's assertion that X is not a startup.

Johngibb 16y ago

To go along with the recent post "My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk." (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322696)... Who cares? Let's just embrace the fact that a simple side project could very well turn into a profitable business in the field we're all operating in? How does a rant bring more to the table than someone calling a side project a startup? (whatever the distinction may be)

ebaysucks 16y ago

Stop Writing Linkbait Articles. Come to think about it, that would be an awesome linkbait article.

ldh 16y ago

I guess my reading HN is a bit incongruous with this opinion, but I'm kind of sick of the fetishization of startups in general.