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Do you mean that a substantial number of the respondent entrepreneurs founded companies that are not "startups" (i.e. aren't small)?
by 10ren 17y ago
Do you mean that a substantial number of the respondent entrepreneurs founded companies that are not "startups" (i.e. aren't small)?
- pg 17y agoNo, that only a tiny fraction of small companies are startups. Most small companies are local service businesses or one-man consulting operations.
- unalone 17y agoSo they're not start-ups in your sense of the word, but they're businesses self-started that make a living for the person/people in question.
- pg 17y agoIn whose sense of the word is a plumber or a gas station a startup? I'm not putting people who start those types of businesses down. Please don't try to make it sound as if I am.
- unalone 17y agoBy the time I went to reply you took out my favorite quip of what you wrote—"That's the kind of line a politician would say." The article was about entrepreneurs. It was not about your idea of startups. Your comment was defending a concept not present in the article. I've never liked the word "startup". Ontologically it means that something's begun. I don't feel comfortable assigning more meaning to the word than that, though the connotations have been assigned.
- pg 17y agoThe article was about entrepreneurs. It was not about your idea of startups. Imagine an article on a web site about the NFL that began "When you think of a football player, you probably imagine someone six foot five who weighs 250 pounds. But a new study shows the average football player is actually four foot eight and weights 80 pounds." Because the average football player is actually a little league player. So yes, the study described in the article is about founders of small businesses rather than startups (in what you call my sense, meaning the generally accepted sense of the word). But what makes it misleading is that it appears on a site about startups, begins by talking about examples of startups, and then claims it's surprising that people starting small businesses have different characteristics. It's not surprising at all that the average person opening a gas station or starting his own landscaping company is 40.
- jhancock 17y agoThis is a more effective explanation. It will be interesting to see how stats evolve for "IT startups". On one hand, we have loads of unemployed well educated young people right now that can afford to risk their time. These may be more likely to seek seed capital? Go big or go home models? On the other, we have loads of seasoned industry vets with stable lives and cash in the bank to make a go of a new IT business. These may be more likely to start with one or two paying clients? Steady growth models?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- psranga 17y agoI replied elsewhere also: the list of industries surveyed (page 10) all seem to be high-tech.
- cglee 17y agoThat's a good example and shows the crux of the problem. In your example, the article should have said "the average NFL player", which offers a clear category of football player. The term "startup" is not as clearly delineated as "NFL player", hence the confusion.
- psranga 17y agoPaul, the article has a list of industries they surveyed (page 10). Plumbing and gas stations don't figure. They all seem to be high tech.
- jeromec 17y agoSemantics on the word "startup": In my view to qualify as a startup the idea or business process must be novel in some way. Otherwise it is simply "self-started" as you mentioned.
- thetrumanshow 17y agoI realized just now that I have been reading hacker news without properly understanding of what pg means by a 'startup'. Found this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=728689 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=728689 Now, I will at least know what pg is referencing. I still won't know what other commenters mean by a 'startup' unless they are synced up on this too. I wonder how you can fix that?
- smikhanov 17y agoI personally call "startup" a company at the stage when it attracts venture capital funding (i.e. high-risk investments). Palm, Inc. at the stage of developing and releasing Pre fits into this category (and I bet the people in the Pre departments were working like in typical startup). The respondents' businesses probably attract low-risk bank credits instead (i.e. the money entrepreneur must pay back at some point). This makes things different. Those businesses are probably into retail, or consulting, or something similar; the potential leverage is lower there. And these are not the sort of businesses that get most of the attention on HN.
- replicatorblog 17y agoIt is a matter of semantics at some point. Club Penguin was a tech startup that sold for mid-nine figures without raising any VC. Mahalo actually seems more like a plumbing company than a tech start up in a weird way, but has raised VC from top tier firms. The big distinction is building a business that can make you money while you sleep. something that can scale beyond the hours you work vs. being constrained by billable hours or their equivalent.
- pg 17y agoClub Penguin was funded by angel investors though.