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Comment by cushychicken | Hacker News Reader

Good observation. Paul's definition of "startup" seems to be "company that grows explosively to a massive size/valuation in a short number of years". The sort of businesses you cite seem to fall under the "small business" moniker, and would probably be one of the mouse-sized companies he referenced in the essay as one that tried to avoid trampling by the elephants of BigCo.

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Here's the specific part in question:

" People did start their own businesses of course, but educated people rarely did, because in those days there was practically zero concept of starting what we now call a startup: a business that starts small and grows big. That was much harder to do in the mid 20th century. Starting one's own business meant starting a business that would start small and stay small."

Hmm so explain Fairchild and Intel and all the spin out companies in SV.

I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't write the article. I just quoted the guy where he laid out the definition or his understanding of the term of « startup » which IMO is in line with the current common and broad idea of startups in that they're a special breed in the small businesses category that possess specific qualities that make them rather distinct from other business ventures and establishments.

That part is a bit questionable. Educated people starting small companies that grew big is not something new in American business. Not even educated people starting small technology companies that grew big. It's possible there has been a quantitative change, with it being more common now (I'd need to see numbers to be convinced of that, but it's possible). But "practically zero concept" prior to the 1980s?

Actually, the rate of new business creation has been falling ever since the 80's. According to [0], “Unfortunately, new firm formation has waned since the 1980s, and the recession accelerated the decline."

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-small-business/post/...

Hewlett-Packard, founded in 1939, in a Palo Alto garage. By academics. They were educated at Stanford, go figure.

>Starting one's own business meant starting a business that would start small and stay small.

And what's wrong with that?

Besides it being false of course.

If anything it's more sustainable and more productive (as these business MAKE something, don't just eat VC dollars or at best sell ads) than today's "startups" model, which is based mostly on a speculative bubble + ad money.

All the thousands of major companies, from IBM to Bell and from HP to Apple, Boeing, McDonalds and Kodak, and countless others in all lines of business started as small and grew from there.

It's a perversion (and counters the rest of PGs rhetoric) to narrow startups to "companies funded with VC money for a few years to get enough users/eyeballs in the hope that they can be sold for a few billions" which is more or less the modern kind.

Or start small, grow to a modest, profitable size, and be sold. A friend of mine recently retired (in his 40s or 50s) after selling his high-end catering business for a few megabucks.

Yes. "FU money" is a surprisingly low amount compared to what some startup owners think they need to make (and suffer the lower odds for it).

>And what's wrong with that?

I think pg would likely answer "Nothing". Whenever he brings up that sort of entrepreneurship, it's generally to showcase the rarity and timescale with which these small businesses (IBM, Boeing, GE) got huge in a time before the internet.

I'd agree that the Internet hasn't made big businesses get any more substantive, but it has allowed them to get bigger faster.

Like Fred Koch, Post and Kellogg, Hughes, JP Morgan, and Du Pont?

I guess a difference would be that now you don't need employees.

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