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Well, yes. Perhaps I should have explicitly mentioned Rule Zero: "You can call your company whatever you want. It's yours." :) I'm not sure it's possible to ob

Well, yes. Perhaps I should have explicitly mentioned Rule Zero: "You can call your company whatever you want. It's yours." :) I'm not sure it's possible to objectively identify a startup, except perhaps in retrospect. To borrow PG's fun metaphor for a moment: You can look at a tall redwood and conclude that it was once a seedling, but you can't look at a seedling and conclude that it is destined to be a tall redwood. And that's not just because some seedlings get eaten by beetles before they can grow tall. Sometimes seedlings end up living for many years as bonsai trees, where they are carefully pruned and tended in their tiny indoor pots.

tptacek 18y ago
You're right, but I wish we could get past the value judgements. A startup is a company that just started. A small business is a company that is small. A large business is a company that is large. Why do we have to build a speculative growth curve into the term "startup"?
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  Why do we have to build a speculative growth curve into the term "startup"? Presumably because, if the average small business with no net profits went up to a VC and asked for $3m on a valuation of $100m, it would be laughed out of the room. I'm inclined to agree with you, but AFAIK the word "startup" was invented by small companies which desperately wanted to convince investors that they were absolutely determined to become large companies. So I'm not surprised that it still carries that connotation... the real surprise is that the connotation is wearing off. We're getting to the point where your proposed definitions sound more and more reasonable. Because it no longer takes five years of advance planning, an enormous staff, office buildings, multiple factories, and all the other big-company trappings to scale up a small company, if that company is on the web.
kwamenum86 18y ago
Perhaps the term "startup" is, at least in part, partly a marketing term these days just like Web 2.0.

tptacek 18y ago

You're right, but I wish we could get past the value judgements. A startup is a company that just started. A small business is a company that is small. A large business is a company that is large. Why do we have to build a speculative growth curve into the term "startup"?

mechanical_fish 18y ago
Why do we have to build a speculative growth curve into the term "startup"? Presumably because, if the average small business with no net profits went up to a VC and asked for $3m on a valuation of $100m, it would be laughed out of the room. I'm inclined to agree with you, but AFAIK the word "startup" was invented by small companies which desperately wanted to convince investors that they were absolutely determined to become large companies. So I'm not surprised that it still carries that connotation... the real surprise is that the connotation is wearing off. We're getting to the point where your proposed definitions sound more and more reasonable. Because it no longer takes five years of advance planning, an enormous staff, office buildings, multiple factories, and all the other big-company trappings to scale up a small company, if that company is on the web.

kwamenum86 18y ago

Perhaps the term "startup" is, at least in part, partly a marketing term these days just like Web 2.0.