Hey everyone, come invest in my new startup called "doing the dishes." Launching in about five minutes.

If I can pay you to come to my house and do my dishes, yeah it's a startup.

If I don't pay you, but you still come round when I ask, it's still a startup, but with a freemium price point.

If I don't pay and you don't turn up when I want, but you still are washing someone's dishes, it's a side project.

If you don't come and do my dishes, it's a pivot.

Except that words need to mean something, otherwise anyone can arbitrarily decide what they mean at their own convenience like what's happening now.

Having been interested in business since before the dot-com book, I've seen "Startup" transform from "New business, dealing with new business problems" to the very SV-driven notion that it's a new business expressly designed to scale quickly.

Words might need to mean something, but there's already been a lot of drift here.

The meaning of words has always been a negotiation.

That's of course not just happening now, it has always been a problem with the term. There has never been wide industry agreement as to what it means, going back decades.

That's how you end up with the media referring to 10 year old type companies that have thousands of employees as start-ups. I don't think a definition for it is going to get narrowed now, it will probably always be a broad/loose term.

In trying to “take back the word startup” and redefine it to fit your own preferred meaning. I expect you will find, most on HN will take a more conservative position in it’s definition.

I agree that the term "startup" is not strictly defined. But often the nuances are "can we only call a quickly growing company a startup" (a la Paul Graham) or "can we call any young company a startup".

What the definitions agree on is that a startup is company, a business. Making a business involves a lot more than creating a product and is a much more complex undertaking.