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Comment by freediver | Hacker News Reader

Company founded in 2009 with $8bn in funding is called a startup!

So, is Google still a startup? When does a startup end being one?

What should I call my actual startup these days? A nano-startup? ;)

There are several definitions of the word. This company fits one, often used by VCs and the media, which is that a startup is a company still developing a product, either with no revenue of not enough to cover its expenses, and funded by external investments.

My personal definition is a company which is still looking for a product-market fit.

> often used by VCs and the media, which is that a startup is a company still developing a product, either with no revenue of not enough to cover its expenses, and funded by external investments.

It would imply that a bootstrapped business can not be a startup.

> My personal definition is a company which is still looking for a product-market fit.

My first company became profitable on the night of the launch thanks to incredible product-market fit. Showing up to work the second day surely felt like still working in a startup, although product-market fit search was already behind us.

Personally, I define startups to be business ventures where the rate of change and the freedom to take sudden turns is still high.

> It would imply that a bootstrapped business can not be a startup.

And it isn't, at least by that definition.

> Personally, I define startups to be business ventures where the rate of change and the freedom to take sudden turns is still high.

This is also a good definition.

My point is that we need to keep in mind that not everyone thinks of the same definition when using the same words.

Startup for me is a euphemism for a business that has yet to make a sustainable profit (and perhaps never will.)

The company I work for that was founded 9 years and has been sold to a multi-million euro company calls itself a startup. It drives me nuts.

I once got contacted by a major (at least by national scale) company with a history of 100+ years and revenue in the billions of euro, asking if I'd be interested in working in one of their departments, describing it as "a startup of some sorts".

I like pg's definition of the term: A startup is any (pre-IPO) company with potential for high growth.

http://paulgraham.com/growth.html

Ship a product and let the market prove its successful or fail.

A startup is a company which faces significant risk of its equity going to zero, which has also never had a period in which the risk of its equity going to zero was negligible.

Tesla is still a startup, so is Rivian

Google is not a startup, Bank of America back in 2009 wasn't a startup although risk of equity going to zero was huge, but it had a darn long spell in which the risk was nonexistent.

There are a few startups where that definition needs some flexibility, specifically startups that are based on large assets. A farm might be a startup, even though its key underlying asset (land rights) really will never approach zero. It could still fail without ever getting into net zero equity.

I mean equity market price, not equity book value.

Equity market price embeds every information about the company.

a startup is a company that is trying a business model that hasn't been tried before.

The amount of money has nothing to do with being or not being a startup.

This is why you don't call opening a new restaurant a startup.

I don't think thats true. Lots of companies aren't really innovating but just do small variations on existing solutions with nice marketing. Think about all the new companies we see now: ad tech, cyber security, employee collaberation etc etc. Are they all operating in unknown models? They may not have a product market fit but thats a different beast.

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