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Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

Tesla is a startup and at present, I can name few "startups" on the scale of Tesla who aren't losing money. Look at the likes of Twitter, Spotify and Quora, large user bases and are technically making money but still not turning a profit. Tesla is no different and to be honest, has a good chance of succeeding. Elon Musk is one talented guy who has investors swooning over him to give him investment.

Looks like the down-voting has begun, whatever. I won't let people on this site get in the way of voicing my own personal view and opinion on Tesla and their losses. Feel free to disagree.

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A post-IPO, $21B company is still a startup?

The auto industry works a little differently. Some of Tesla's competitors have been in business for over 100 years, making primarily the same product today. Tech companies today exist in industries that didn't exist even 15 years ago.

Tesla Motors has only been around for 10 years (founded 2003), and their first product didn't sell until 5 years later. I think it's safe to say that Tesla Motors is still a startup. They are a startup in an industry that measures time in decades.

That's tenuous. The telecoms industry has been around as long so is Blackberry a startup?

Whenever people question the definition of something being a startup I just point them to this wonderful Quora answer: http://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/What-is-the-proper-def...

Dave McClure makes a fair point that until a company works out the following three things, they're a startup, not a business.

1. What its product is,

2. Who its customers are.

3. How to make money.

So yes, a post-IPO company valued at $21B which still hasn't worked out two of those three items is still a startup in my opinion...

Applying limits : as a large company unravels towards bankruptcy, it's business plans evaporating to ether it rapidly approaches the hallowed title of a startup. By the above metric sun was a startup post 2002, AMD is still a startup, Blackberry is a startup...

Depends on your definition of startup, doesn't it? Some people prefer a definition based on growth rate. Another definition that occurs to me is a company that could perhaps one day be massively profitable, but is currently losing money.

To me, Tesla does seem to have IPOed unusually early. The "usual route" I have in mind is that tech companies typically acquire some very significant market share before their IPO. Tesla look like they're still getting started.

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