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~180 employees is in the startup range. A lot of people say "startup" for anything pre-IPO.

It is borderline, I agree. "Internet infrastructure provider", "Tech company", etc. would be just as accurate as "startup"

"startup" is well defined if you care to think about it - it's an entity looking to find a working business model.

once the model is established, whatever is the size of the entity and the turnover, it's no longer a startup, unless it pivots of course.

this definition rules out all stupid scenarios.

So by this logic, 4sq and Twitter are startups, and Github is not?

it's difficult to call github a startup by any means.

4sq and Twitter could be startups - I'm not sure if they found a business model or not.