> how do you determine / how would you determine if a startup is no longer in startup mode?
It is a challenge as startups transition all the time in different ways - funding rounds, IPOs or the dreaded deadpool - and I'm trying to figure out the best way to represent it. At this time, I'm using a combination of manually vetting, to soliciting public feedback through "edit this profile" button and showcasing the latest state. Rather than deleting entities that are no longer startups, I tag them with statuses like Public, Acquired, Shut Down, etc., and surface that on the profile page. Here is an example, https://startups.in/united-states/airbnb (you can find a badge under the logo and if you scroll down you can see a card that show the exit details).
As can be seen, Airbnb is marked as a "Public Company" with IPO metadata (ticker, exit date, exit value), and still remains in the database as part of the ecosystem rather than disappearing. The current idea is to treat this more like a longitudinal startup graph.
Long-term, I'd like this to behave more like a "historical record" of startups over time (dare say wikpedia for startups but presented differently?), not just a snapshot of "current startups". That way acquisitions, failures, and IPOs become first-class signals instead of reasons to delete data. Thanks again.