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...