

Is money a good success measure for a startup and its founders? - alexpeiniger
http://www.alexanderpeiniger.com/2013/01/is-money-a-good-success-measure-for-a-startup-and-its-founders/

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nmcfarl
PG's recent answer to this is that Startup=Growth
<http://paulgraham.com/growth.html> and that revenue is the best way to
measure that. In the same article he says that funding helps start ups grow
faster (and presumably since that's what a startup is, a growth machine, they
will always take it).

I'm ok with pg's definitions, but I do think there are a huge number of tech
businesses, that aren't first and foremost about growth* that encounter a
large of the same technological, and even business challenges as "startups" as
defined above. And for those companies, cash probably isn't a very good
measure at all.

*Perhaps they are building a tech, or a lifestyle, or even short term profits. I would argue that a good number of startups get started NOT to to produce giant growth, but rather because the founders had another goal (usually to build something) and culturally, in tech, the funded startup seemed like the only route forward. And once you are in it you find you are building growth, not the thing you thought you where.

