"That eventually combined the right idea with the right execution in the right market to make a living. Not buy a boat you can land a helicopter on. Not conquer

"That eventually combined the right idea with the right execution in the right market to make a living. Not buy a boat you can land a helicopter on. Not conquer the world with iPads. Just make a living." I think I wouldn't call that a successful startup. When someone says "startup" to me that inherently means the seed of a large business. A software consulting business isn't a startup in my book. Even Bingo Card Creator, though it at least has the technological leverage, is in too small a space to really be a startup. Selling out early or late doesn't change it, and if they transition from startup to small-medium sized business somewhere along the way, they could have been a startup that had a best case failure, but they would cease to be a start up. I'd worked at one of the latter. A good indicator is when you are given 65k stock options ... at a penny a share.