"Startup" by definition is companies that need large-scale growth to succeed. Uber, DoorDash, those kinds of businesses are start-ups. It doesn't need to be VC investment necessarily, but it needs a lot of capital to get going and there's a certain amount of network effects. That's not marketing, that's what the word means.

> Most new and growing tech startups are not in fact VC funded.

Then they're probably not startups, but just tech businesses. Nothing wrong with that - they're objectively better in my opinion - but let's not call them something they're not just because we like the word or we want the cachet of being associated with something we're not.

I would draw the line slightly differently. Bootstrapped startups are still startups. So for me the definition is more "company exploring a novel technology, product, or business model". Most new businesses are doing something that's well understood. Opening a new restaurant or corner store is hard, but it doesn't have the same need to figure out something fundamentally new.

Yep.

Numbers-wise, I'd think VC-funded startups merit the distinction. They're (a) relying on financiers to make their strategy work (b) there's significant positive & negative impacts of that decision vs everyone else (c) they're the minority.

Startups using non-VC revenue are the majority and also doing all sorts of great work in invention+innovation in tech, business model, doing with scalable ideas, etc. VC $ buys things like press relationships and "X raised Y" headlines, but thankfully the days of breathless capital raise news on tech crunch are much more zzz now.

> "Startup" by definition is companies that need large-scale growth to succeed

By your definition. And maybe a bunch of people who read the PG essay that narrowed the word that way. But not by the definition of 99.9% of economic participants.

Investopedia's definition, for example, bears no relationship to the PG definition. Neither does Webster's, dictionary.com's, or any entrepreneurship textbook you might find. Even Steve Blank doesn't define it that way.