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Comment by eitally | Hacker News Reader

I think it's stupid to overuse the term "startup" where it doesn't make sense. At what point is something just a new small business? Is there an arbitrary set of lines that differentiate between "startups" and every other new enterprise? The vast majority of new businesses are funded solely by personal savings, friends & family, and SBA loans.

Conflating something like a deodorant company with a pure play tech startup just doesn't make any sense to me, especially when the intent is to analyze and compare funding models, performance and exits. And even if you consider new SaaS companies, there are thousands more Bingo Card Creators out there than [insert unicorn here].

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We could also flip that around. Startups are nothing more than small businesses. Most will fail. A few will go on to become somewhat bigger. One out of a million becomes a Ralph Lauren empire. What's the difference really between a small business and a startup?

Startup just sounds cooler, that's why - in reality there isn't a difference. A single parent starting up a hair salon or restaurant is also a startup, it's just a new business being set in motion.

http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

That's a good definition, and a very useful one for VCs . It's also not how most people are using the word. It's not how dictionaries or wikipedia define the word either. So I think we need to be a little careful and make sure everyone agrees on whose definition we are using at the start of a conversation.

I’ve always understood the distinction between “startup” and “small business” to be potential to scale and probably also potential to scale quickly.

A cafe for example can scale to be a well run efficient cafe, maybe even opening additional locations. Scaling a cafe chain globally is a generational endeavour with a staff of tens of thousands.

A company that makes cafe POS software can scale to thousands of cafes globally with a few years with less than a hundred staff.

PG's definition is still a very good one I think: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html .

A deodorant company that sold for $100 million less than 3 years after founding is absolutely what I would consider a startup.

Agreed about the definition of "startup" vs small business - murky.

That said, I think the article positioned their definition of startup by comparing bootstrapped/less-funded companies to Honest (also referenced Honest's challenges vis a vis Seventh Generation).

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