The $12 Startup

A business is a business, even if it has a simple obvious business model - you still have to put a value on your time, do paperwork for it if you make any money (or not, I guess the domain registration is deductible) and buy some keywords or whatever.

Of course, it's not the sort of startup we love on HN because there's no new technology or functionality involved, and it has no potential as a tool in and of itself. But I'd say it's still a startup, banality and all. I look forward to hearing more about it; I'd love to have a side project bringing in a few grand a year on a one-day-a-week basis.

A startup is just a venture where the goal is to make a company that can manufacture masses of license plates cheaply.

Google manufactures search, Microsoft operating systems, etc.

Once you make the switch from developing better and cheaper license plates to churning them out at a high rate you're no longer a startup but just another company.

small business: a small business that intends to stay small e.g. a hamburger shop

startup: a small business that intends to get big. example: a chain of hamburger shops (of course a chain is only one way to "get big").

Note that because they are distinguished by intention, you could have two factually identical hamburger shops, with one being a small business, and the other being a startup run by a deluded nutter, who crazily envisioned a chain of hamburger shops, when every sensible right-thinking person knew that was silly. But I would call it a startup, because of the intention.

pg thinks that it's rare for a startup to succeed (read: "get big") without funding (I'm not so sure, but I can't think of any counter-examples: google, yahoo etc all had funding).

37 signals advocates organic growth, and this works really well for a small business, such as "just a website that sells license plates". 37 signals themselves seem to have grown significantly, but I'm not sure they would be classed a "big company", but seem on the small end of "medium/small business" - therefore they are not (yet) an example of a startup getting big without funding (I'm not sure of their intention - it could be that they don't want this; i.e. that they aren't a "startup" at all). Joel's Fog Creek software is also small at the moment - I don't know whether he intends to become big, and so whether his company is a startup or a small business.

I'm not sure I understand how that doesn't apply to every startup. If you insist on valuing your time fairly from day one, you can never start anything new. You must work for someone else, who can pay you a fair wage. The trade is in the payoff one, two, or seven years down the road.

The payoff for this guy was $100,000, and he seems content with that payoff. For me, just the fact that I don't have to answer to a boss, be in the office at a certain time each day, or have to deal with constant meetings or corporate culture, is enough incentive for me to voluntarily value my time lower than I would working for someone else. Add in the potential for a very large payoff in the future (either an acquisition, an IPO, or just building a multi-million dollar business) and the trade is more than fair. I'd actually do it all for much less than I'm currently paid and less than I expect to be paid in the long run.

I don't think this is a legitimate indicator. I, at least, often register domains when I have a reasonable idea, which can often be a year or more before I do anything with them -- if I ever get around to it at all.