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Comment by rhapsodic | Hacker News Reader

Linkedin and Netflix are still considered startups?

Developer of Startup Jobs here. We use a pretty broad definition of the word startup. In future analysis I'll see if we can differentiate between early-stage, later-stage, etc.

LinkedIn is straight up a Microsoft property now, so it's not even considered "late-stage" anymore.

Netflix was founded in the late 90s, so if you consider them a startup, then the term is pretty much meaningless.

This really puts your overall methodology in doubt.

I agree that Netflix isn't a startup, but I'd say that looking at their founding date is misleading -- Netflix-the-streaming-video-service is an almost completely different company from Netflix-the-DVDs-in-the-mail company.

Netflix is still pre-profit and growth oriented in an attempt to capture/develop a market, and its value is based on speculations about it succeeding. It isn't quite a startup, but its also a bit of a startup... Correct me if I'm wrong.

Not to mention that Netflix is also publicly traded. Personally, I would not consider any public company to be a startup.

Some good points. We don't concrete criteria for which companies we consider startups, but it's something along the lines of "is this a technology company that is disrupting the marketing, and/or rapidly evolving its business model"?

I do think that's the case for Netflix, even though technically it was founded a while ago.

LinkedIn is a bit harder to defend as its business model seems to have stagnated.

I wouldn't think any publicly traded company, nor any subsidiary of a non-startup, qualifies as a startup, even if they previously did before they exited. The tough categorization calls in my opinion are for slow-growing or stagnant long-private tech companies.

With your definition, doesn't Amazon still qualify? It's majorly disrupting markets and rapidly evolving its business model. And it's definitely a tech company.

A definition that includes Playstation, which is a 24 year old brand created by Sony, a 72 year old public multinational corporation. It seems like your broad definition is any company that hires web or mobile developers and isn't Facebook, Google, Amazon or Apple (can't say FAANG because Netflix is on there)

was surprised to see java as the #3 technology behind iOS and android, but this explains it.

I was surprised to see the top technologies be what they are. It differs from some other lists I've seen.

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