Remember, you're quoting from a newspaper. Word "startup" in tech crowd (and thus, in media) means "sexy", "hip", "new", "innovative", and is a label you wear to associate with the sexy crowd (as opposed to the old, fossilized world of typical companies and corporations). Some of the features of this community are:

- the thing to brag about at meetups is not profit, but investor money taken and burned

- you need to grow very fast, because it's how you get investor money

- you ain't going to have a profitable business anyway, so you need to have a plan to sell your soul (and users), aka. "an exit"

- working overtime for free is justified, because "startup!"

etc.

But the primary reason for calling yourself "a startup" seems to be the association with "sexy and innovative crowd". You lose the label when you've been around so long that you make a profit and have other startups competing against you.

Evidence: I don't see companies bragging about being "Small Businesses", which would be a legal term.