There's some cred that's given to any company that's a "startup". Which is why successful startups do their best to extend the use of that term-- claiming that their culture stays the same. The same way that job titles are being inflated, I think there's "startup inflation".
In one of my college business classes we tried to define a startup, and we ended up with something like:
> A startup is a company that is new company, less than 5 years old, that is also looking for a big payout by trying a risky and novel product or business strategy. A startup is also looking for extremely high growth, which is usually funded by outside investment.
So, github? No longer a startup. A year after you've become successful and paid off the VCs? No longer a startup. If you're a design/development agency? Not ever a startup, because the product/services you're providing are not novel or new territory. If someone made a competitor to Jira, I might also hesitate to call it a startup. At some point these kind of services get commoditized.
Of course, colloquially this definition fails and I don't ever try to push this definition on people. But it helps to conceptually divide the "high-growth new product startups" from the "lifestyle startup" and "traditional business startups".
In one of my college business classes we tried to define a startup, and we ended up with something like: > A startup is a company that is new company, less than 5 years old, that is also looking for a big payout by trying a risky and novel product or business strategy. A startup is also looking for extremely high growth, which is usually funded by outside investment.
So, github? No longer a startup. A year after you've become successful and paid off the VCs? No longer a startup. If you're a design/development agency? Not ever a startup, because the product/services you're providing are not novel or new territory. If someone made a competitor to Jira, I might also hesitate to call it a startup. At some point these kind of services get commoditized.
Of course, colloquially this definition fails and I don't ever try to push this definition on people. But it helps to conceptually divide the "high-growth new product startups" from the "lifestyle startup" and "traditional business startups".