Did I say that somewhere or are you just straw manning me?
My post and paulsutter's are clearly referring to the Silicon Valley idea of a startup, not the general idea. The difference is one of intent, so it is useful to distinguish between the two.
Someone who opens a diner or a watch repair shop or a Kinko's franchise with the intent of servicing their locale is certainly doing "a fledgling business enterprise" and thus may technically be doing a startup. But SV is specifically interested in greenfield endeavors that can leverage the web or other new tech to find a large customer base and rapidly scale to billion dollar+ valuations.
Given your long history on HN I know you know this so why are we bickering over semantics?
It's true that lots of people use the word startup to mean fledgling business, and that's perfectly OK and cool, but if you use the term "startup", in Silicon Valley, to refer to a lifestyle business, people will view it as self-aggrandizement or delusion.
This is also true in any venture capital context anywhere in the world.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/start-up
"A Fledgling Business Enterprise"
That's exactly what it means, no more, no less. Keep in mind that outside of the HN crowd absolutely nobody would know who either Steve Blank of Paul Graham are and neither of them get to redefine the English language.