[the_bear]

I think there are two common definitions of startup, and neither require VCs to be involved.

One (seen elsewhere in these comments) is any small business. I personally don't like that definition because there is a pretty big difference between a local coffee shop and the thing we all mean when we say "startup".

The other one which is more common here is a company that is currently small, but the business model involves getting much much larger. There's a blurry line between a small business and a startup with this definition, but it seems to be a "you know it when you see it" type of thing.

Companies like Mailchimp and Atlassian (in their early days) clearly qualified as startups even though they hadn't raised VC. You might say they're outliers, but so are the VC-backed companies that reach that level of success. If a small company is growing quickly and on pace to become a multi-billion dollar company, it seems weird to say they're not a startup just because they didn't raise money from the right people.

[jasode]

>Companies like Mailchimp and Atlassian (in their early days) clearly qualified as startups even though they hadn't raised VC.

Even the Paul Graham essay defining "startups" the way he saw it said "VC funding" wasn't required: https://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

It's just that many mentally associate "startups" with VCs and software tech because that's often how rocket-ship growth happens.