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Comment by CJefferson | Hacker News Reader

Point 2 - "A Startup's Only Mission is to Create Value for Your Company". And there was me thinking a startup's only mission is to get noticed by some big company, acqui-hired, and shut down at a moment's notice.

While I realise this is the most cynical comment I could write, it's also my experience with far too many of the startups. This is particularly bad with web startups as (a) it seems to happen more and (b) once the website is gone, so is the product.

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Also, even if they sincerely try to do so, a startup may not have the resources to service a large enterprise. For example, a multinational company with offices around the world will require support that's available 24/7 (you can't ask customers in Asia to call you in the middle of their night). And the bandwidth requirements of a large company may swamp the startup's servers.

But the biggest problem is stability: even if the startup's goal is to build a real business rather than being acquihired, most startups fail suddenly (e.g., due to cashflow problems and a lack of a bank credit line), and that would leave their customers scrambling to replace some critical part of their infrastructure. That's why established companies are reluctant to bet their business on a startup.

Anyone who is considering starting a company that markets to other companies needs to think about these issues (which probably accounts for the predominance of startups that sell to consumers rather than businesses).

If you are a startup offering 24/7 support, then staffing a 24/7 support desk needs to be part of your plan. It basically means cycling or dedicating two of your team members into the two 8 hour shifts that don't overlap with your primary operating hours. If you are getting a number of large enterprise signups, this should be easy to justify. These people could have useful roles (like QA) they are also performing.

Post author here. I think that's more common in consumer startups without a clear path to revenue and profitability. I know it happens in the B2B world as well, but I don't believe anyone thinks 42Floors, Cratejoy, AirBnB, Square, or Casetext are on their way to an acqui-hire. It's certainly not our plan.

Buying from startups is not without risk. But buying from large vendors also carries risk. A diverse set of suppliers is a good thing.

Out of interest, at what point do you think a company stops being a startup?

Picking the one company from that list I am most familiar with, AirBNB has been going since 2008. AirBNB are now the people acquiring and shutting down / changing other startups!

To classify a company as a "startup" I'd go with either Steve Blank's definition (An organization in search of a repeatable and scalable business model [0]) or Jacobellis v. State of Ohio (I know it when I see it [1])

Sure, AirBnB certainly appears to have hit the scaling part. But I bet they're still trying to find new models and new markets. Hilton, Marriott, Starwood and others dominate the corporate travel market. Dropbox appears to be moving towards photo sharing on the consumer side and config/settings sharing on the tech side.

Startup, not startup. Probably irrelevant. I know that there's value in having companies who think like a startup as vendors. Procurement departments aren't structured to be allowed to think that way and I think that's bad for the companies they serve.

[0] http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-princ...

[1] https://casetext.com/case/jacobellis-v-state-of-ohio/paragra...

So is Google a startup then? They are definately trying new models and markets - Glass, self driving cars, robots, etc.

How would AirBnB be any more of a startup than Google?

On what basis are AirBnB and Square still classified as startups?

While "big" and successful, they are still young companies with startup ideals. Not simply legacy companies where every employee is long removed from the original drivers and mission. Just because AirBnB has a $1B+ valuation, doesn't mean it conducts business like IHG or Marriott. They still have startup values.

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