People has been asking me whether A or B website can be called startup, what is the criteria to be called a startup, what is startup? Yesterday I found an article explaining big differences between a startup and a project.
Like many of us have known, the word “startup” is relatively new and that caused ambiguities and misuse in daily talks. According Brenden Mulligan in his article, “project” is a creation (usually in forms of websites, web apps, or mobile apps) while “startup” is a full time maintained projects, or already got funded and or having revenue. In other words, startup is a project that turns into full time business.
I think this is true. Now to simplify deciding whether one website is a startup or a project let’s take below factors into consideration:
– Raise capital: funding (seed, angel round, series A) or joining an incubation program
– Income: is there any income from the project? Doesn’t have to be profitable all the time, but at least there’s income.
– Legalities: is it legally registered as profitable organization?
– Commitment: full-time, part-time or modest dedication?
Perhaps below factors can help you to decide whether your project can be called a startup already. If it meets just one of the factors above, so your project deserves to be called “startup”, although “project” is not so bad.
Translated by Nita Sellya.
I really like Steve Blank’s definition of a startup, which is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model: http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/
He differentiates startups versus established companies, where the former is trying to become the latter, but is definitely not a smaller version of the latter, since the business model hasn’t been validated yet.
As for calling one’s work a startup versus project, I would say it’s a matter of what the final goal is, to create a business or scratch an itch. I believe if the goal is to eventually generate revenues, then any endeavor with risk is a startup. If it’s something born out of passion or interest, like a developer wanting to write a fun game to showcase his web skills, then that’s a project.
Mine was a project 🙂