I had so much interviews at plain old small to middle sized companies in Germany which called themself start-ups just because it was cool. But most of them were just generic consulting shops.
What does that mean: "people who run companies that don't even think about building a product"?
What do these companies you refer to do?
A "product" is when someone identifies that a repeatable solution exists for many customers. This is not as common as one-off solutions for a particular customer.
I haven't come across any of those describing themselves as a "start-up", but I probably just don't get out enough...
A startup is usually understood to be a company which is formed to test a new market or disrupt an existing one. The fast growth thing is not necessarily true since new markets are often not there. But to describe just any new company as a startup is very misleading both in terms of describing risk, but especially to potential employees.
This isn't to knock the value of entrepreneurship: there is quite a bit of virtue in starting a company that wants to tap an existing market. All things considered, these companies will likely do much better over the long run than most startup companies which end up failing.
I don't think many people will agree on this definition.
A new restaurant that is after ultra fast growth is not a startup. It's a small business. A new software company that attempts to innovate in a small niche is unlikely to achieve ultra fast growth but it is a startup.
To me, the difference between a startup and a small business is that a startup's goal is to innovate and its success depends on that innovation sticking. Quick growth is just one (possible) characteristic of this territory.
That's why most startups tend to be in the tech sector: most innovations use technology.
That's before you get into fads. Remember frozen yogurt? On a percentage basis that growth rate was incredible, and there were attempts to franchise, although that food fad went nowhere in the long run.
start-up -- n. a fledgling business enterprise
A new company with slow growth is a start-up. An old company with fast growth is not a start-up.
There's nothing about the growth rate that qualifies a company as a start-up. Though I suppose it could seem that due to a new company having "nowhere to go but up [or fail]".
If I open a hot dog stand, I may have incorporated only a month ago, but I haven't founded a startup.
--
This reminds me of one of my favorite HN posts ever. It's about dictionaries, good and bad.
No. For that, you'll have to provide a narrative of how you will revolutionize the global fast food market and secure the fate of humanity by providing billions of people real-time access to the very best of bovine and porcine by-product nutrition (optional: include heart-warming story about Denise, a mother of 7 from Decatur, IL, who was enabled to escape a hell of drug abuse and prostitution by opening a franchise, highlighting the world changing nature f your business and elegantly glossing over the fact that the franchise owner effectively earns less than a toddler searching landfills for sources of lithium).
Allowed to fester, the spin-terrorists will rape a language to its death.
Hackernews is not the world.
That must be why this is a reoccurring discussion on HN...