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Comment by v_lisivka | Hacker News Reader

Startup is aimed at growth, to become next unicorn. If your business is not aimed at growth, then it is just regular business.

YCombinator is incubator for startups, hence their HN site is aimed at startups too.

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I first registered on HN many years ago because reddit had started to become more “mainstream”, so to speak, i.e. the programming-related posts had become the exception rather than the rule. As such I was never interested in start-ups, no matter how the HN founders relate to the start-up world. I think I’m not the only one in this boat. I’m also not obsessing that much over money, other than having enough funds for decent rent, a low-middle-class vacation per year and for gas and insurance for my small 1.4l hatchback. Paying (sometimes) too much money for books is my only guilty pleasure, but you don’t need to own a business in order to do that.

> What to Submit:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

--- https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Interesting view; I suppose if you look at HN as an extension of YC, then you're right: it would make sense that HN tends to focus/cater more to the growth/funding points of view.

For me, HN has become a source of news/ideas related to innovation (with an obvious leaning towards digital/technological innovation).

I guess, given how I see this community (and use it for access), it's refreshing to see an article like this :)

You missed an important point: a startup can pursue growth in a healthy way which is not frantically scaling. It can take a decade or more to convert/pivot your company into a valuable one. The typical VC fund structure limits this approach.

I can see why YCombinator would be biased toward startups that raise funding, HOWEVER: I've always understood the word 'startup' to simply mean any new business.

It very much depends on how you define a startup

Exactly. Startup = Growth http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

I mean, Steve Blank's definition is equally valid.

https://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-prin...

"A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model."

Maybe you see "scalable" and think "to a billion users". I see "scalable" and think "sustainable over the long term".

I think a small business is when you know the business model can work and have moved on to long-term execution. Until then you are a startup.

> I think a small business is when you know the business model can work and have moved on to long-term execution. Until then you are a startup.

I disagree slightly. A small business is one where the founders have a particular business model in mind, regardless if it's feasibility. If the business model is wrong, the business folds; it doesn't pivot. Until I was introduced to the startup community this was my sole understanding of "starting a business".

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