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Comment by dentemple | Hacker News Reader

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dentemple·

LinkedIn is straight up a Microsoft property now, so it's not even considered "late-stage" anymore.

Netflix was founded in the late 90s, so if you consider them a startup, then the term is pretty much meaningless.

This really puts your overall methodology in doubt.

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I agree that Netflix isn't a startup, but I'd say that looking at their founding date is misleading -- Netflix-the-streaming-video-service is an almost completely different company from Netflix-the-DVDs-in-the-mail company.

Netflix is still pre-profit and growth oriented in an attempt to capture/develop a market, and its value is based on speculations about it succeeding. It isn't quite a startup, but its also a bit of a startup... Correct me if I'm wrong.

Not to mention that Netflix is also publicly traded. Personally, I would not consider any public company to be a startup.

Some good points. We don't concrete criteria for which companies we consider startups, but it's something along the lines of "is this a technology company that is disrupting the marketing, and/or rapidly evolving its business model"?

I do think that's the case for Netflix, even though technically it was founded a while ago.

LinkedIn is a bit harder to defend as its business model seems to have stagnated.

I wouldn't think any publicly traded company, nor any subsidiary of a non-startup, qualifies as a startup, even if they previously did before they exited. The tough categorization calls in my opinion are for slow-growing or stagnant long-private tech companies.

With your definition, doesn't Amazon still qualify? It's majorly disrupting markets and rapidly evolving its business model. And it's definitely a tech company.

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