Steve Blank has a good and well-known definition for the term startup: "an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model." http://

Steve Blank has a good and well-known definition for the term startup: "an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model." http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/ http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-princ... In this sense, a typical new restaurant or dry cleaner isn't a startup, because they're following an established business model. A startup restaurant would be experimenting with innovative pricing, production, or other techniques, and would probably have to tweak its model on the road to success and would face an outsized risk of failure.