Every single definition highlights that difference versus traditional small businesses. Trying to re-brand small businesses into "startups" for the cool name factor just seems silly to me. If you're making a sustainable small business then call it that. Don't call it a startup. You'll get more customers that way as well and more relevant business contacts.
People care about startups because of the high growth rate. Renaming a small business to a startup achieves as much as slapping a porsche logo onto a honda civic. The civic is a solid car but you won't make people'd heads turn with that logo on it or not.
Gotcha, thanks. I always thought it was "first 3-5 years". Could be an example of word meaning diluting as it goes mainstream - hacker being the ur-example. ("Semantic bleaching" is the jargon term, apparently).
I was wondering when the first use of the term in its modern sense was, so I just glanced at Google Books and found this from 1805, which is just too good: "a startup was a coarse kind of half-boot with thick soles; [...] its use is now superseded by that of the modern spatterdash." [spats?]
By 1949 I've got this: "But startup businesses, and even mature businesses in some localities, may face financial constraints" -- Agriculture Information Bulletin, Issue 664, Page 113. I can't find anything pre-WWII.
>A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model.[1][2] While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder.[3] During the beginning, startups face high uncertainty[4] and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential, such as unicorns.
The characteristics in that paragraph don't apply to new mom & pop restaurants, dry cleaners, new law practices, etc so most people don't usually label them as "startups".
But there is no Global Language Police that everybody has to obey so if some folks wants to label their new neighborhood coffee house a "startup", nobody will stop them.
EDIT to REPLY: >If you keep reading we get to: "Unlike an entrepreneur, a start up founder doesn’t have a major financial motive." I'm not sure that is in line with the YC program.
I see that you're referring to a LinkedIn article that someone added to Wikipedia. I agree with you. That Linkedin blog by Japjot Sethi has bad heuristics and should be removed as a citation. The Wiki user that added it in May 2019 has been flagged and blocked for bad edits to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sensate8
> The characteristics in that paragraph don't apply to new mom & pop restaurants, dry cleaners, new law practices, etc
I fully expect the founders of those businesses originally have dreams of their business becoming the next F500. But when validation fails...
> and very often associated with funding from VC.
If you keep reading we get to: "Unlike an entrepreneur, a start up founder doesn’t have a major financial motive." I'm not sure that is in line with the YC program. It is clearly focused on the huge exit.
> I fully expect the founders of those businesses originally have dreams of their business becoming the next F500. But when validation fails...
I take it you've not met many such people or business owners. No one except the utterly delusional would think a mom & pop restaurants, dry cleaners, new law practices, etc. would become a F500 company. Amazingly people start companies for reasons other than becoming a F500 company one day.
> No one except the utterly delusional would think a mom & pop restaurants, dry cleaners, new law practices, etc. would become a F500 company.
Do they fail at achieving F500 status at a higher or lower rate than "startups"? Who then is delusional - those who have realizable visions, or the strivers who dream of unicorn-status and still fail.
> No one except the utterly delusional would think a mom & pop restaurants ... would become a F500 company.
The F500 has quite a few restaurants on the list. Other than maybe Starbucks, it seems all of them have humble "mom & pop" beginnings.
Who opens a business thinking "I hope customer response is so poor that I will struggle and never be able to grow"? That is often the outcome – but when is that the dream?
> But there is no Global Language Police that everybody has to obey so if some folks wants to label their new neighborhood coffee house a "startup", nobody will stop them.
This is the trick that VCs/investors use to justify certain behaviors (which I don't care to enumerate here). When you have terms with colloquial meanings and mean different things to different people, the terms are ripe for manipulation. As an example, there are people who still call Uber a "startup". It's very much not a startup in sense of the word, but yet there are still people who refer to it as such.
> That Linkedin blog by Japjot Sethi has bad heuristics and should be removed as a citation.
Which is precisely why the wikipedia article is heavily biased by those who are responsible for maintaining content on the Wikipedia who happened to lean towards the tech circles (yes I'm aware I could submit a petition to Wikipedia to change it). If anything, Wikipedia should create a disambiguation between a Webster's definition and silicon valley's definition.
Regardless of if the startup intends to hit it big or remain smallish, a startup is really something that's appropriate until it's operating for profits rather than growth and/or growth in it's market niche naturally slows down due to saturation.
That's another reason I find the re-naming of small business to startup so silly. Putting a billion dollar company and a family small business on the same label is silly just because were started recently. Some startups are worth billions the second they are created. Personally I think startups generally stop being called startups when they get old enough or go public. Then they get other labels such as a private company or a public company.
The point of labels is to quickly give a lot of relevant information about some entity. This helps customers, investors, clients, future employees and so on understand the entity quickly.
