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Comment by mosselman | Hacker News Reader

I usually make more sure than 'most of x is y' before I claim certain things. This is just hipsterism. Ebay, LinkedIn, Mozilla? Are you kidding?

While in New York I went to some networking events where people said 'I work for a startup', 'How long have you guys been around?', '4 years', 'That doesn't really sound like a startup.', 'I know, but we FEEL like a startup.'... A*holes.

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Well, 70% (which implies "most") or more of the companies listed on LeanStack are startups, I don't understand what your definition of Startup is.

He said many. I agree with him: Intuit, Twitter, eBay, GitHub, Mozilla, Netflix and Atlassian are hardly startups. And this list is by no means exhaustive.

Sure, many others may be startups, perhaps even most. But since when do we generalize away ~30% of some population. That's not very scientific. I can't think of many scenario's where this would be acceptable.

When do you cease being a startup?

When you are too big to pivot.

When 0.1%-10% of equity is no longer in the cards for high value front-line (not VP) employees.

When you shift from customer development to company-building. In other words, when you stop searching for, and instead start scaling, a business model. See also: http://steveblank.com/2012/03/05/search-versus-execute/

After about 1-2 years.

It is like saying that your car or house is new after 10 years. Or saying your shoes are new when they are 6 months old.

The word is pretty self-explanatory, it is not that hard people.

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