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A comment on Facts About Entrepreneurs That Will Likely Surprise You. Parent comment

Re:Facts About Entrepreneurs That Will Likely Surprise You by smikhanov on Monday September 21, 2009 @11:52AM (#834830)
I personally call "startup" a company at the stage when it attracts venture capital funding (i.e. high-risk investments). Palm, Inc. at the stage of developing and releasing Pre fits into this category (and I bet the people in the Pre departments were working like in typical startup).

The respondents' businesses probably attract low-risk bank credits instead (i.e. the money entrepreneur must pay back at some point). This makes things different. Those businesses are probably into retail, or consulting, or something similar; the potential leverage is lower there. And these are not the sort of businesses that get most of the attention on HN.

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Re:Facts About Entrepreneurs That Will Likely Surprise You by replicatorblog on Monday September 21, 2009 @12:17PM (#834888)
It is a matter of semantics at some point.

Club Penguin was a tech startup that sold for mid-nine figures without raising any VC. Mahalo actually seems more like a plumbing company than a tech start up in a weird way, but has raised VC from top tier firms.

The big distinction is building a business that can make you money while you sleep. something that can scale beyond the hours you work vs. being constrained by billable hours or their equivalent.

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Re:Facts About Entrepreneurs That Will Likely Surprise You by pg on Monday September 21, 2009 @01:29PM (#835041)
Club Penguin was funded by angel investors though.
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