
Your startup is not a startup, it’s just a website. - zipop
http://blog.crranky.com/startup/your-startup-is-not-a-startup-its-just-a-website/
======
AznHisoka
I love this post. People always ask you "Are you doing a startup? A hobby? A
side project?". I always respond "I just wanna make revenue, damn it, call it
whatever you want".

There's this website called MyFitnessPal.com. Has over a million uniques. Run
by just 2 guys from their own house. No coverage in TC, VentureBeat, or any
startup publications. Yet they probably get more visitors and more revenue
(and less employees) than 99% of the startups covered.

~~~
kul
Actually, their office is next to ours at 333 Bryant Street, and there's
probably around 20 people in there. We borrowed a chair from them last week.

~~~
ftwinnovations
This reply made me smile, and is such a great example of why it's so hard to
trust anything we read on the Internet, anywhere. I don't know which response
to believe, if either, and don't know why I care so much either way.

Edit: A little coverage in VentureBeat
[http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/19/health-tracking-app-
needto...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/19/health-tracking-app-needtoeat-
keeps-your-waistline-in-check/) I just had to check. :)

~~~
charlieok
I'm sure a great many web companies that have 20 people today had 2 people not
so very long ago. Stats have associated timestamps :)

~~~
bacfadeaway11
I would venture to say that almost every start-up begins with 1 or 2 driving
forces, and branches from there. I am hard pressed to remember any that
haven't. Anyone here think of one?

------
morisy
Having had my own revenue-positive "startup" called a hobby, a toy, a blog and
various other diminutions, generally by people who've never managed their own
company's budget or, if they have, have blown millions in startup capital,
this was great.

Whether your company's a startup or not can drive you up semantic walls, when
the the focus should (for some people) being on building something of value,
whether that value's for shareholders, investors, or just yourself, and to
hell with all the labels.

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
"I managed $ABC million budgets..." always makes me think, "Was it your money?
Or were you just dipping into the seemingly endless corporate coffers?"

I think working with big corporate budgets negatively trains you for running
your own company. You can just throw money at things and if it doesn't work
out, no big deal. Drop $80k on a booth at a trade show that didn't result in a
single sale? Well, at least you got some good face-time, right? That kind of
thing just doesn't fly when you're just starting out on your own.

It's much harder to manage a $20k budget and go from $0 to >$0 revenue than it
is to manage a $1 million budget that just magically refills year after year.

~~~
dagw
_Or were you just dipping into the seemingly endless corporate coffers_

At both large companies I've worked at each department had its own budget, and
each department head was responsible for that budget. If a manager keeps
losing too much money, they get fired, if a department continually fails to
turn a profit the department gets closed down. So while it's not the same as a
startup it's also not like you have infinite money to throw around without
consequence.

------
melvinram
Well it's not as clear cut as the post suggests, though it's clearly stated as
an opinion piece so they are entitled to whatever they want to think/believe.

The difference I'd like to point out is how scalable and reliable the business
model is for generating value (aka money.)

For example, I run a web design company that offers custom services and
consistently generates revenues each month. However it's not a scalable
business. If I got 100x more sales next month, I would need more people and
the number of people needed would most likely be a linear function of the
number of sales I got. Also, it's not a completely reliable business model in
the long run.

Compare that with that of Wix.com, which is a DIY website builder software. I
would bet that they know that for every X free users, they'll generate $y in
add-on sales. If they got 100x more users/customers, they would need more
people and resources but likely it would be an logarithmic function.

Now if you had a "startup" like Wix without a clear focus on figuring out how
to generate revenue, that's just foolish. That wouldn't be a startup. That
would be wishful thinking.

Basically what I'm saying is that it wouldn't be fair to say that my business
that consistently generates $x/month is better than a "startup" that might
generate 1/10 of the revenue each month _IF_ they are deliberately trying and
succeeding at figuring out an effective, scalable & reliable business model
because in year Z, they could be 10x my revenues.

------
neya
This trend needs to change. There's too many guys out there running Wordpress
blogs on shared hosting plans and/or making Android (or iPhone) apps, just to
call it a 'start-up'...my Facebook friends list is full of these guys, calling
themselves with ridiculously random titles like CEO/Founder/Co-Founder/MD of
<insert-wordpress-blog_or_mobile_app_here>

Back in the days, a start-up was something different, something the society
looked down, you know...a real challenge (which is why the society looked
down). Today, the scenario is like as if its cool to run a Start-up (and
fail).

X: "Hey dude, I run a startup..howz about you?"

Y: "Cool story bro..I runz one too..wanna be my co-founder?"

X: "sure thing bro...right away"

[now X can call himself a 'Serial Entrepreneur' because he sabotaged his old
start-up for a new one]

~~~
Juuumanji
Exactly. What is even more annoying is that so many of them have ideas that
require millions of users to make any money.

What's wrong with creating a SaaS for $80/month and finding 500 users?
$40k/month is more than so many of these clowns will ever make.

they need to keep their heads down and mouths shut. rant over = )

~~~
erichocean
_What's wrong with creating a SaaS for $80/month and finding 500 users?
$40k/month is more than so many of these clowns will ever make._

No love from your peers? Seriously, B2B is way undervalued around here...

------
btilly
The definition of startup that I like is Steve Blank's, _a temporary
organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model_.
By that definition, his website was not a startup. It was a lifestyle
business.

Note that this definition does not describe startups as inherently good thing.
Just inherently different than other types of businesses in many key ways.

------
stripper
I can really relate to this. I have a site that provides a service, does about
175k uniques & 900k pageviews per month and generates revenue from paid
accounts ($1k), adsense ($4k) & partnerships ($10k).

Do I consider it a startup? Not really. But I don't really consider it to be
just a website either. I guess my definition of a startup is an entity that
has a team behind it, provides some type of service & could be substantially
scaled with funding or revenue.

~~~
itmag
Mind telling us more about your site? :)

~~~
biot
One could extrapolate from the username...

~~~
stripper
I was waiting for that. I'm a longtime HN frequenter and didn't want to post
under my real account so I used a username generator and low & behold the
first suggestion wasn't taken - what luck... Debated on it's appropriateness
but figured I had to use it since it wasn't taken.

------
ig1
Words mean different things to different people.

Startup. Ninja. Hacker.

There's absolutely nothing to be gained by arguing about word definitions,
people treat definitions as axiomatic. People don't logically derive what a
word means through etymology or historical usage, they define it as what they
understand it to mean.

Telling someone that their definition of a word is wrong is like saying their
preference for one colour over another is wrong. It's a personal view, accept
it and move on.

~~~
icebraining
Eventually, that makes communication impossible. If people are constantly
reassigning different values to the same terms, you may have a conversation
where each participant is actually discussing something different, and where
the conclusions are therefore irrelevant.

To give you a current example, take REST. When a service says it has a REST
API, it tells me absolutely nothing, since I don't know if they mean REST as
in Roy Fielding's dissertation or REST as in "JSON instead of XML and some URL
templates".

Their ability of communicating with me has been destroyed by people constantly
reassigning different definitions to the term.

------
Lambent_Cactus
Call me old-fashioned, but if you're not making new technology, you're not a
start-up, you're a small business. Making a small business is cool, and if
your small business happens to be a website, that's cool too.

But if all you want is to make a successful small business, and you don't care
about technology, you're not really part of my community, and I don't really
want you there. I want my community to be people who care about technology
first, and business second. People who care only about business and don't care
about technology tend to be the kind of people who ruin the companies and the
communities I like, where people care about technology first, even if those
companies became valuable because they were full of people who cared about
technology first.

~~~
rprasad
All new businesses are startups, whether they use technology or not. They may
not be _technology startups_ , but they are still startups.

Indeed, legally, the first year of any business is considered its "startup"
year (and possibly longer, in specific situations), and during this time the
"startup" is eligible for tax breaks or exemptions under state and federal tax
codes. This use of "startup" precedes Silicon Valley.

~~~
rprasad
(reply to dead comment)

Yes, a bakery is a startup if it is just starting up. So is a taco cart, if it
the vendor is just starting out. This is the classical definition of startup.

------
g-garron
"You are not the CEO, you are the fucking janitor"
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4169206>

As someone said already, it is not how you call your "company" or the position
you have in there. The results should be the important thing.

The whole thing about Startups, definition, is that every single John Doe,
want to say he is a hacker "just because he knows how to code", and want to
say he has a startup "just because he has an idea, and a software/site based
on it".

Well, definitions might be OK, but I agree with you. At the end of the day
what really matters is how much money comes into your wallet, it does not
matter if you are called "the janitor of the website".

------
alberich
Startup is about starting a new business isn't it? If your first project was
making money, but wasn't a business, with at least a rudimentar business plan,
goals, and all the formality involved in doing real business... then maybe it
was really just a web site that was making money as a side effect.

It looks like people enjoy romanticizing this darker side of starting up a new
business. It's not your fault if you don't fail the first time you try :)

------
xpose2000
I'm with the author on this one. I'd pick a simple blog with millions of
pageviews per month than a fledgling start-up idea that is losing money.

Is it super sexy? Of course not, but in the end, who cares?

------
markbnine
Trying to define _startup_ these days is like trying to define _hacker_. The
meaning changes, depending on your company. This is a good thing. It signifies
a culture shift.

~~~
brlewis
PG defines a startup as a business with very high growth potential.

According to my accountant, the IRS defines a startup as a business activity
that is not yet profitable, but you're actively working to make it profitable.

By either of these definitions, not every new venture is a startup. This is
just semantic. I don't think "not a startup" should be an insult.

EDIT: I see from another comment that Merriam-Webster defines start-up as a
fledgling business. IMHO this makes the English language a little less rich,
since you could just as easily say "new business", but it is what it is.

~~~
sadlyNess
PG also stresses the importance of creating a _new technology_ in his
definition of startup.

A startup is a 'Useful infrastructure' previously and wholly 'nonexistent'
that 'fills a need' for a population and thus earns revenue. I'm sure I've
left something out but this definition helps me sort between startup ideas and
content ideas in my head.

------
mrmincent
Somewhat related- foreign correspondent (a news show in australia) ran a story
last night on the new goldrush for people creating apps. Besides the cliché
camera work, it seemed to be full of 'founders' who had written a single,
sometimes unproven phone app and were talking about getting hundreds of
thousands of dollars in funding, and getting acquired for a billion dollars.

I'm not sure if you can watch it outside of australia, but it's available
here: <http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2012/s3572792.htm>

------
Kique
The guy who runs the accelerator program at my university once yelled at me
for calling my startup a website when I was explaining it to him. He told me
to call it a product or a service and that I should NEVER EVER call it a
website - and that "fuck, my 5 year old son can make a shit website". It
really made the rest of the phone call awkward since he kept talking down to
me and I was being super careful to avoid the W word.

Thoughts on his advice? He was the only investor I've ever talked to so just
wondering for the future when talking to other investors...

~~~
lubujackson
He sounds like an asshole, for one. But maybe there's a point there - if you
want to get investment, you should be talking about your business. That means
employees, roles, taxes, stock, lawyers, planned growth, goals, etc. The
website may be the medium by which you operate, but if someone is to invest in
you, they are going to want to see you thinking bigger.

Consider it the difference between someone with a corner store and someone
wanting to build a new franchise. No one "invests" in a corner store.

------
jusben1369
Trying to follow the logic here. Keep getting stuck. The problem appears to be
that folks feel like the term "startup" is abused and watered down to the
point of being meaningless. Admitting a self described content aggregator
(from one source!) into the club helps out how?

I think it's awesome this individual displays the ability to generate $10K in
free cash flow per month. (I edited this as it sounded snarky when I read it
back) The more you widen the definition the weaker the definition becomes.

------
jonathanjaeger
A startup usually comes with the connotation that you will scale it to some
sort of ideal (whether that be revenue, the people or businesses you have an
impact on, etc.). A site that pulls in a decent income via advertising is
really just a lifestyle business with little chance of scaling. Now if you
made a network of these sites or found some other scalable product coming from
this site.. then you'd have a startup, no? No one says you have to build a
startup though.

~~~
nanijoe
"A site that pulls in a decent income via advertising is really just a
lifestyle business with little chance of scaling"

Would that make facebook & google the grand daddies of all lifestyle
businesses?

~~~
Pheter
No, because they have successfully demonstrated that they don't have "little
chance of scaling"

------
brador
Anyone have more info on the gaming site mentioned?

From the tone of the article it seems like it's no longer earning, Google
slap? The old Adsense ban? Game fell out of popularity?

~~~
milesokeefe
I would like to know as well. I can't find anything about it on any of his
sites.

~~~
brador
From a quick Googling looks like it was a blog covering the club penguin game
and riding that popularity wave a few years ago.

------
eliben
Really, so much revenue from 100K uniques and 1.5M page views a month? I
wonder if that's typical or just some kind of Crranky's blog speciality?

~~~
spiffytech
Those figures fit with what I remember about ad revenue. If I remember right,
it's normal for around 2% of hits to convert into an ad click. If we pair that
with a $0.50 mean earning-per-click (memory and a cursory search of the
Internet say this is reasonable), we get:

    
    
      $0.50 * (1.5 million * 2%) = $15,000/mo.
    

That leaves some leeway for Crranky to have worse performance and still hit
his quoted $10,000/mo.

~~~
pdog
$0.50 per click and 50 impressions per click implies $10 CPM... Isn't that a
bit high?

~~~
Strom
It's achievable today, and was even more easily achievable 5 years ago.

------
stevewilhelm
A startup is a company that has captured a small percentage of the overall
market it is attempting to fulfill. For example, I would say Tesla Motors is
still a startup.

By contrast, I would not consider crranky's Blogspot website a startup because
I suspect it has captured most of the small, shrinking market it targets.

------
ricardobeat
Both the OP's and that guy at the conference's attitude is wrong. One
demeaning someone's work, the other chasing a ghost.

Where did that revenue-generating website go?

That said, this might not be the case, but if your work is creating the same
value as the standard car salesman (i.e. none), you'll get corresponding
respect.

------
PeterisP
A company with a goal of making revenue and dividends is a normal company (or
'a website' in some cases). It may be a large company or a small company,
growing or shrinking - but not a startup. A company with a goal of making huge
(not 100%, but 100 times) growth is a startup.

100k company aiming to be a 200k company is not a startup;

100m company aiming to be a 200m company is not a startup;

100k company aiming to be a 200m company is a startup;

0$ company aiming to be a 200k company is a startup.

IMHO. Does it make sense?

P.S. and it is often determined by the actual business ideas. There are some
ideas that can grow and scale if everything goes well; and there are some
ideas simply that have a market ceiling of, say, a few million even if
everything goes perfectly.

~~~
dreamdu5t
IMHO No, that does not make sense at all.

Think about the word "startup." The etymology of the word means, literally,
"start up [business]". A new company that has yet to prove itself is a
startup. The Merriam-Webster definition is "a fledgling business enterprise."

If that's not a startup, then calling what you're referring to "startups" is
very counter-intuitive.

It's as if I had referred to a recently founded car manufacturer as a "new
business" and then subsequently everyone started referring to 20-year-old car
manufacturers as "new businesses."

------
keeptrying
Both the author and his critique have different labels for the same thing. Its
a non-issue.

A startup is company which doesnt have a stable cashflow and is searching for
one. Thats about the only difference that really needs to be applied from a
taxonomy point of view.

Impact is also completely unrelated to the label "startup". Private citizens,
companies, NGOs, social communities and even projects-on-the-internet (eg:
Linux) have had a huge impact on the world and its hard to say who has had
more. Again another inane and useless conversation - who has more impact.

First make enough money to attempt to make an impact. Then you can try your
hand at actually making an impact.

------
andygcook
The best definition of a startup that I've heard so far is from Eric Ries's
book, the Lean Startup:

"An organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of
extreme uncertainty."

I think anyone that wants to take a risk and actually create something should
be allowed to call themselves at startup. Does it really matter if it's a
business, website, startup? At the end of the day, it's pretty easy to tell
who is serious and generally talented verses the people who are just hobbiest
or not putting their full effort into their businesses.

------
reustle
I mashed this down into a tweet a few weeks ago.

:%s/startup/website/gi

<https://twitter.com/reustle/status/224870973923532800>

------
Kilimanjaro
I rather have 10k monthly from a blog than headaches and stress that will give
me nothing in return besides telling my friends I am a serial entrepreneur.

------
anovikov
I would say that a startup is something that generates value (hard to do), not
cash flow (which is easy).

I had a lot of businesses that generated $10 K+ a month, some without me doing
much at all, or working 5-10 hours a week. But they didn't worth a dime, so
they weren't startups. I couldn't sell them for any meaningful amount. So is
yours.

------
dumbluck
Good post, even though had a bad experience.

I think whether site or startup, it is just a (hopefully informed) crapshoot.
In the end, the goals are to be happy, make money, and make a difference.
Whether you do that via startup, or other means, doesn't matter. And, if you
fail, you (hopefully) learn and can do better next time.

------
zio99
What if the website's hosted on Geocities?

------
EGreg
Sometimes it's not a website. When you make an app, the App Store really plays
a big role in both promoting and selling it. I just wrote about how to get
your apps promoted there:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415473>

------
eranation
Actually, a startup doesn't even need a website, or be anything software, a
startup is a new company trying to create a new service or product that will
bring revenue. No revenue, no company, no startup. Tesla motors is not a
startup?

------
matznerd
I always felt the same way doing internet marketing stuff. I had fun and was
making money, but I didn't consider my company a "startup" because I wasn't
really creating any new technology. I think that is kind of the difference...

------
mrgreenfur
Do what you want. Build what you want to work on. Bills need to be paid, but
ultimately I would rather work on an application that provides needed
functionality than on copying and pasting blog posts and negotiating ad deals.

------
lifeguard
This article made me think of profitable Internet companies in two categories:
1) content monetizers / producers 2)software projects making apps

I think engineers admire apps more than content. But money and fame can be
made with either.

------
rshlo
If it makes money it's a business. If it doesn't makes money than it's a
problem.

------
brudgers
Something I wrote on the matter:

[http://www.kludgecode.com/index.php/startup-in-the-
silicon-v...](http://www.kludgecode.com/index.php/startup-in-the-silicon-
valley-sense/)

------
wwwong
Completely agree. My favorite 'startup' that's 'just a website', handsdown:
Slickdeals. That forum probably pulls in more revenue than 99% of startups.

------
pppggg
Literally speaking, if you have "started something up", it is a start-up!

------
jonthn
I just have a website that sells people websites. What do we call that?

~~~
onedev
A startup incubator?

------
Diamons
[http://boxngo.tumblr.com/post/29561118300/5-things-
startups-...](http://boxngo.tumblr.com/post/29561118300/5-things-startups-do-
that-i-hate) Covering the same thing

------
drivebyacct2
I always feel awkward with things like this... I'm more interested in building
cool things and making them open source and/or interoperable than I am
instantly trying to revenue-ize it. I'm so tired of all of these apps that do
the same damn thing with (insert some random useless gimmick) that will
_never_ amount to much because they're all competing with each other for
critical mass because their products are largely useless without a large-
enough network.

~~~
sharkweek
no, but seriously, this will be the best to-do list app ever

~~~
continuations
Well, it really is different this time.

It is a big data local social gamified MVP'd pivoted to-do list built on a
distributed paxos consistent lock-free real-time column-based k/v persistent
memory grid.

~~~
purplelobster
No bootstrapping? That's my favorite word.

~~~
brazzy
Not really compatible; bootstrapping (in the business sense) is kinda the
opposite of VC-chasing, which is what such buzzword-fests are typically a
symptom of.

------
celere
Paying someone for developing a (IMHO not really fancy and useful) webapp
isn't the same thing as leading "real" startup. A "Startup Guy" works on his
product 24/7, talking to investors, partners, costumers and much much more...

