Every single definition highlights that difference versus traditional small businesses. Trying to re-brand small businesses into "startups" for the cool name factor just seems silly to me. If you're making a sustainable small business then call it that. Don't call it a startup. You'll get more customers that way as well and more relevant business contacts.
People care about startups because of the high growth rate. Renaming a small business to a startup achieves as much as slapping a porsche logo onto a honda civic. The civic is a solid car but you won't make people'd heads turn with that logo on it or not.
I was wondering when the first use of the term in its modern sense was, so I just glanced at Google Books and found this from 1805, which is just too good: "a startup was a coarse kind of half-boot with thick soles; [...] its use is now superseded by that of the modern spatterdash." [spats?]
By 1949 I've got this: "But startup businesses, and even mature businesses in some localities, may face financial constraints" -- Agriculture Information Bulletin, Issue 664, Page 113. I can't find anything pre-WWII.
Maybe this is a US centric definition. It's definitely not what I mean when I talk about a startup with European or Asian tech founders.
It's a common definition for new companies that intend to grow quickly beyond a small/medium size and very often associated with funding from VC.
1st paragraph from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company :
>A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model.[1][2] While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder.[3] During the beginning, startups face high uncertainty[4] and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential, such as unicorns.
The characteristics in that paragraph don't apply to new mom & pop restaurants, dry cleaners, new law practices, etc so most people don't usually label them as "startups".
But there is no Global Language Police that everybody has to obey so if some folks wants to label their new neighborhood coffee house a "startup", nobody will stop them.
EDIT to REPLY: >If you keep reading we get to: "Unlike an entrepreneur, a start up founder doesn’t have a major financial motive." I'm not sure that is in line with the YC program.
I see that you're referring to a LinkedIn article that someone added to Wikipedia. I agree with you. That Linkedin blog by Japjot Sethi has bad heuristics and should be removed as a citation. The Wiki user that added it in May 2019 has been flagged and blocked for bad edits to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sensate8
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Startup_company&d...
Regardless of if the startup intends to hit it big or remain smallish, a startup is really something that's appropriate until it's operating for profits rather than growth and/or growth in it's market niche naturally slows down due to saturation.
The point of labels is to quickly give a lot of relevant information about some entity. This helps customers, investors, clients, future employees and so on understand the entity quickly.
A commonly accepted answer to this question is "The exit strategy does not involve 100X[1] valuation"
[1] Pick the appropriate multiplier.
Your take is typical on HN, but not the common interpretation.
TBH, it appears to be the commonly accepted answer to the question asked, but that doesn't mean it's a commmon interpretation.
To be even more honest, I'm not really sure how I'd classify the difference either; there's a lot of blurring of lines there.
