joel.francis.7351
Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
What is the definition of a startup?
A startup is a company that is designed to grow really fast (5-7% a week is an internal YC benchmark). That's it. Nothing else matters.
Growth could be revenue or it could be active users. Of course, trickery like bribing users with more money than their lifetime value doesn't count.
The beautiful thing about being narrowly focused on growth is that other factors like capital, talent and eventually revenues and profits generally follow if you have growth.
But growth is elusive and is never smooth, even in the case of seemingly seamless journeys like that of Facebook or early days Twitter. These companies had to employ growth teams whose job was to ensure that user growth continued from millions of users to tens of millions to hundreds of millions. With Twitter user growth stalling and LinkedIn showing a drop in user engagement, their stock prices have taken a beating recently.
So if you are growing at a 5 to 7 percent rate of growth week-on-week, you're a startup!
A startup is a company that is designed to grow really fast (5-7% a week is an internal YC benchmark). That's it. Nothing else matters.
Growth could be revenue or it could be active users. Of course, trickery like bribing users with more money than their lifetime value doesn't count.
The beautiful thing about being narrowly focused on growth is that other factors like capital, talent and eventually revenues and profits generally follow if you have growth.
But growth is elusive and is never smooth, even in the case of seemingly seamless journeys like that of Facebook or early days Twitter. These companies had to employ growth teams whose job was to ensure that user growth continued from millions of users to tens of millions to hundreds of millions. With Twitter user growth stalling and LinkedIn showing a drop in user engagement, their stock prices have taken a beating recently.
So if you are growing at a 5 to 7 percent rate of growth week-on-week, you're a startup!