It seems kind of crazy to me that people talk about startups and try to apply completely the same model for everything to: 1) A social app like this, which is

It seems kind of crazy to me that people talk about startups and try to apply completely the same model for everything to: 1) A social app like this, which is essentially hype-based and self reinforcing. Success seems entirely down to virality and adoption, followed by monetization. 2) Some very vertical market focused SAAS offering which can be developed with minimal outside capital, own a niche, and where capital can then be applied to expand to other verticals, accelerate the sales process, etc. (Say, a scheduling application for vets) 3) A capital intensive project in a well understood field (IAAS, hardware, lab stuff, etc.) 4) Entirely new technology deployment (not discovery, which tends to be hugeco or lab, but first commercialization) Clearly there are some commonalities, but there are a lot of areas like employee vesting periods, how you recruit, etc. which probably should be different in these different kinds of companies, but tend to be the same.