Couldn't agree more - let the entrepreneurs define and live the term "startup" - not the VCs.
(PS: After sleeping over pg's essay, I found it much less convincing the next day - implicitly, he's mixing up price with value, ignoring the temporal nature of markets and of opportunities - Google couldn't have been a startup in 1989 and Ford was a startup in the 1910s - and disregarding multi-product and B2B startups (premium Tibetan to Hungarian services) altogether. The clincher from yesterday - weekly growth of 7% - sounds like utter BS today.)
EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted. I'm just pointing out that this article only and only defines a startup in terms of its worthiness to investors. It's as misleading as any other single-formula characterization of a complex multi-agent system. Startups != Growth, period.
7% weekly growth may seem like BS, but it happens. The arbiter of this growth rate is a function of need and reach as PG said. To say it is BS while there is evidence the phenomenon is possible (having experienced it first hand and seeing friends achieve it for long periods of time) and that we even know the factors in it -- that is a self limiting belief indeed.
I am not terming that as BS because it's impossible - it's not. I'm saying it's not suitable for all businesses (it might be downright hara-kiri for some of them) - that alone should not disqualify them from being known or viewed as startups.
Why not? Words and terms are useful only if they mean something. It is not useful to mix "high growth startups" and "slow growth startups" in a single word meaning/term, as the practical difference is actually bigger than what they have in common. So PG is saying that "startup" means "growth startup", and young enterprises without the goal of explosive growth should be called something else, as they are significantly different.
Yeah I agree, but I think you dilute your point by saying "Period" at the end. I tend to find people that say period like that have a week argument and want to close discussion, but you have a good point, so probably remove it in future, it might make you look less aggressive.
(Maybe this is just something that irritates me, But I am sure others get a bad impression from saying Period like that)
(PS: After sleeping over pg's essay, I found it much less convincing the next day - implicitly, he's mixing up price with value, ignoring the temporal nature of markets and of opportunities - Google couldn't have been a startup in 1989 and Ford was a startup in the 1910s - and disregarding multi-product and B2B startups (premium Tibetan to Hungarian services) altogether. The clincher from yesterday - weekly growth of 7% - sounds like utter BS today.)
EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted. I'm just pointing out that this article only and only defines a startup in terms of its worthiness to investors. It's as misleading as any other single-formula characterization of a complex multi-agent system. Startups != Growth, period.