The thousands of startups today that are pitching...

There have always been startups whose first products seemed like quick hacks (including some that went on to be extremely successful). There have always been startups that seemed more derivative than inspired. (And a few of these turned out to be revolutionary, because even if 98% of the idea was a ripoff, the last 2% was based on a deep understanding of the product being 'copied' that nobody, especially pundits, understood the significance of)

The only difference the author can point to is that more people are doing startups, more startups are getting funded, and there is more of a supporting infrastructure to help startups (incubators, hackathons, blogs, etc). Certainly starting a startup has become more socially acceptable. While this may make the act of entrepreneurship less "rebellious", this is not necessarily the kind of rebellion that makes for disruptive startups. Whether I get nods of approval or worried looks when I tell my non-startup friends I quit my big company job to start a startup has little bearing on how disruptive my idea is.

The article sounds more like a hipster's complaint than anything else ("I was into startups before they were cool!")

Ha ha ha... isn't this the guy that deleted his AngelList account? Maybe the reason he's getting swamped with pre-revenue startups is because he's locked himself off from funding ones with actual revenues. You know... by people who think their high-growth businesses should be valued at more than 10x revenues.

What Bryce doesn't seem to understand is that viable businesses no longer need his money. He wants entrepreneurs to carry all the risk of getting profitable and THEN value their businesses cheaply while offering him over 100% return-on-investment per year. Uhh... no? And he should really quit blogging since there's probably no more surefire way to drive away good pitches than broadcast this sort of hostility to entrepreneurs.

"Is the word “Startup” meaningless? If so, why and does its loss of meaning really matter? If not, what does it mean now?"

I don’t think its meaningless, but I do think its meaning has somewhat been cheapened. The issue is that people are quick to lump early stage companies all into the same boat. There are many different segments within it. We just don’t have words that properly describe those segments.

For example, a startup that is ramen profitable is not on the same level as 3 guys setting out to build an minimum viable product. That sounds pretty obvious, but I would bet that a lot of people would say they are both startups.

IMHO, it’s not a startup until you have product/market fit. Until then, it’s an interesting project you’re working on with the intention of turning it into something real.

That’s the approach we’ve taken. In the past month or so, we’ve achieved product/market fit and have officially upgraded ourselves from an interesting project we’re all passionate about to a startup we’re all passionate about.

Admittedly, this was more of an internal perspective, but perhaps this is the type of approach that should be taken.

If you think that participating in a startup event is building a startup you're highly mistaken. The reason to join a startup event is primarily meeting great people, networking, and taking advantage of the PR inherent in the event. The point is not to 'win' the event, the point is to hustle, code, market, and pitch.

I'm doing startup bus right now, and my team is excellent. We are Answer in 30 if you're interested. We don't go into the pitches expecting an offer, we go into the pitches to spread the word in the community, increase awareness, and meet people we can use in the future when we're in a better position. Of course we wouldn't turn the right offer down. It's unrealistic to think that you'll get an offer after 48 hours. However, if you can generate interest you should take advantage of it. My co-founder Margaux and I remarked today how wonderful it was to get 4 hours of sleep. We're taking full advantage of Startup Bus and SXSW to promote, pitch, and generate interest. We've interviewed at least 50 people for our startup (video answers to questons in under 30 seconds) at any time in the day we're driving the startup forward. And we'll never stop.

Even this post has potential to raise awareness. I have a feeling your perspective of the individuals involved derives from media and not from being a part of a startup event. If you'd like to know what my co-founder and I think I'll try to make a point to respond to this thread. But we've got a busy schedule including 4 hours of rehearsal tomorrow for a 5 minute pitch. We're dedicated and realistic that we may not receive an offer, but we're going to try, and if we fail we will pick ourselves up and try again. Startups are an ethos not an event.

We're pitching with blue hair, we're both burners, we created a 2 person team when most had 4 to 5, and some 9. We're out and about talking to our userbase, the spirit of rebellion is alive and well. We believe in the idea and will see it through the entire lifecycle. Startups die when the founders give up.

There are just as many amazing startups out there as was X years ago, it's just the noise floor is higher now. When we interviewed every startup on startup bus we were surprised how many people said that whether they'd continue was dependent on what the judges thought. It never even factored into our decision.

As a student interested in entrepreneurship, I get this feeling all the time. Teachers and profs will tell you if you have a good idea to pitch it at the University's Big Ideas/PowerPitch/NextBigThing program and see if you can get the approval of a board of investors mixed with business professors. Not a single teacher has ever straight up told me to go and start a business directly.

I think something you will see in a few years is kids coming out of college prepped for giving great pitches but having no idea what to actually do with the money. Entrepreneurship got lumped in with the business school at my college. All the student entrepreneurs do is learn about how to attract investors and give good pitches about untested ideas. The gist of entrepreneurship is projected as just presentation without any mention of creation.

"Somehow the act of creating a startup has become the goal instead of the building of a business…"

This is so true. I believe building a startup is just like launching a rocket. Just because you had a successful launch doesn't mean you'll have a successful mission.

People forget nowadays that in order to be successful you need to have a destination. The launching of the startup is just one of the first small steps.

Well, most small businesses fail in the first few years. But that doesn't stop millions of them from becoming viable. We tend to think that the ecosystem only has room for a handful of Internet or technology companies, but that's far the case. Sure, the Web itself is something of a black hole for profitability, where more often than not the startup itself is essentially the product. But this is not representative of the wider phenomenon of small business formation. It's becoming much cheaper to create and run a small business, and as a result the rate at which new businesses are launched has grown.

Ever heard of the story of how much would you charge to wash all windows on Seattle?

Cool response nowadays: Nothing! We will get investment, do it for free and figure out later how to make money :)

http://fseek.me/2010/12/how-much-should-you-charge-to-wash-a...

whether the startup is the goal or the means to a greater end doesn't really matter in the long run as far as I'm concerned. that daring to come up with some idea, any idea, and build a beta site is enough whether they think this is enough or not is irrelevant as startups which think this way will generally fail in the long run, regardless. People may be getting lazy, but there is still always the final test of consumer reaction. If youre not providing something people need and youre not doing it as well as possible, youre not competitive and youre not going to last.

A startup weekend is just about startup ideas. There is more and more "startup ideas" competition but "startup" is about long term execution.

To the extent that people use the word startup to mean, "Er, I made some web pages, maybe a little glue code in Ruby, etc., and it has a purty design and single toy barely-a-feature feature", yes, the word startup is being devalued. Wake me when there's a real business there, making money, and it lasts for more than a few months. Investor money is also dangerous because it's much easier to create a sort of shake-and-bake business, out of nothing, purely on investor money, as opposed to bootstrapping and growing off of real customer revenue.