The idea of "what exactly is a startup?" bugged me for a while until I read this PG essay: http://paulgraham.com/growth.html http://paulgraham.com/growth.html

The idea of "what exactly is a startup?" bugged me for a while until I read this PG essay: http://paulgraham.com/growth.html http://paulgraham.com/growth.html He eloquently explains that startups are different from "normal" businesses and VCs invest in them because of the possible rate of growth. This kind of business has only been very common in the last few decades in the tech industry. And has probably been amplified in the last two decades by the internet.