Paul - You are certainly describing something important but your narrower definition of startup conflicts with the prior definition as being a company that is searching for a repeatable and scalable business model (http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-princ...). I am doing exactly this but I won't gamble on seeing growth sufficient to interest a VC.

What you seem to have identified in 'Startup = Growth' is a subset of the startup ecosystem more akin to 'wildcatting.' Both wildcatters and the ventures you seek risk capital from domain experts. These wildcatting risks and rewards are huge as you know better than most.

Maybe a more dignified word than 'wildcatting' can be found but 'startup' is taken.