I'm pretty sure you are a couple of guys who setup a wordpress site with a generic theme on a shared server. Also it seems to be having trouble handling the small amount of traffic that comes from 5am hacker news.
PS: we know puxxle, we existed before them and there's no user generated content on puxxle.
Did you guys take VC money or something? This just looks like a normal business to me. I mean I run a small business that makes mobile apps. Is that a start up as well? Is any kind of business with a website that sells something a start up?
Would this company be more of a startup if their website was powered with a custom made app written in Erlang on the backend and Haxe on the frontend? ...
Would this company be more of a startup if they could lure some VCs to invest in them? ...
Please come back to earth and provide constructive comments, or better arguments, like pan69 did [1].
The difference between a startup and a business is that a startup is usually trying to solve a problem (often through the use of technology, a.k.a. hi-tech) in the hope that the "invention" pays off. These sorts of high risk businesses often don't get loans from banks. That's where investors come in.
So, as pfisch is saying, selling stickers on the Internet is not a startup.
I hope you guys do well. It looks like a well executed project.
eric ries, in his book The Lean Startup, defines it as follows:
"A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty."
so lets see. Is this website a human institution? Probably. If its not, it certainly passed the Turing test.
Is it designed to create a new product or service? not really. Its selling stickers that the user has the ability to customize. This isn't all that new or original of a concept.
Is it doing so under extreme uncertainty? I would say not. This is selling a product that there is already known demand for. It is not extremely uncertain if there is a market for their product.
So my 2 cents is that this is not a "start up" but rather merely a new web business. Still, good for them! May the Force be with them, and may they find beautiful solutions to their problems.