Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It?

Re:Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It? by givemeethekeys on Saturday October 04, 2025 @02:06PM (#45475325)

A business is a startup when its goal is to raise investment with the understanding that it will use all the money towards rapid, aggressive growth, and then raise the next, much bigger round of investment, or get acquired, or go bust.

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Re:Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It? by everybodyknows on Saturday October 04, 2025 @03:10PM (#45475821)

What's the current term then for a newly founded business that is pursuing some other strategy? For instance, bootstrapping to organic growth, or self-funding toward a long-term profitable "lifestyle" business?

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Re:Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It? by jenadine on Saturday October 04, 2025 @04:08PM (#45476287)

A "new business" or a "small enterprise"

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Re:Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It? by gordonhart on Saturday October 04, 2025 @02:34PM (#45475530)

Solid definition. Being on the VC treadmill, and all of the “vibes” that come with that, is really what it boils down to.

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Re:Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It? by collingreen on Saturday October 04, 2025 @02:50PM (#45475664)

I like to say a startup is a business where growth is far and away the primary goal and it becomes a regular business as that shifts toward revenue or stability or specialization. I don't think it HAS to be VC but a big chunk of VC cash is a great way to bet everything on growth so it might be the defacto definition anyway and I'm splitting hairs.

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Re:Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It? by dilyevsky on Saturday October 04, 2025 @05:51PM (#45477040)

By your definition OpenAI and Databricks are startups.

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