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Comment by violiner | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much. When I hear someone call their project a "startup" instead of a "business" I assume they're trying to scam the world.

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There's a few reasons, among them to attract certain kinds of investors, and certain types of potential co-workers, and to mix with whichever crowd the "startup action" is happening in.

If you want people to think of David to the incumbent Goliaths, something with a mission to introduce something new and breakthrough to the world, a conduit for the wild dreams of youth to come alive, call it a startup.

If you want people to think stodgy, established, nice stable place to work and pay your mortgage off for 30 years, but no changing the world, call it a business.

Like any branding, that will affect who approaches you and what opportunities you end up with.

That's fair, and I get the branding distinction. Maybe I just think it's played out and there needs some new way to communicate that. When I someone emails me about working at a startup I think "No, I don't want to humor your get rich quick scheme by working for lottery tickets. Nor do I want to work for organized crime like Uber, or commit fraud like Theranos, or destroy civilization itself like Facebook." To me the word communicates a kind of tech savvy used car salesman vibe. I understand that there are Enrons and cigarette companies, so "businesses" aren't immune to this either. Maybe I'm just skeptical of human endeavor.

And most startups who claim to want to “take on Goliath” really want to get acquired by Goliath. Whether they want it or not though, that’s the expected exit of their investors.

Just look at YC. Only two YC backed companies have ever gone public - DropBox and PagerDuty.

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