So you call yourself a startup. Should you?(2 min read)

All startups are young upstarts. But not all young upstarts are startups. So think through a few points before you call your new business a startup.

In all my time working with startups in various capacities including as a founder, an advisor, a consultant or a mentor to founders I start with asking the following questions to understand if the business entity is really what I call a startup?

• Are you chasing a Big Hairy Audacious goal?
• How are you going to change the world (of whatever your industry is)?
  (lets talk disrupting or challenging the status quo)
• What does your team look like. Are they well positioned to attack such a problem?
• What is your end-game? Do you have an end-game?
• How resource constrained are you?
• How agile & innovative are you?

As a general rule, start-ups need to have a clear target and it is generally good for it to be a huge target (in size and in difficulty level). You should be doing something ‘really different’ – solving a new problem or solving an existing problem in a a much more efficient way (larger, better.

The riskier your proposition, the lower the chance of someone succeeding at. The riskier the problem, more credible should be the people you need in solving it as that will increase your odds at it.

For every project or initiative you take on, its wise for you have an end-game? Have a clearly defined direction and be nimble enough to make as many left and right turns to get to your finish line? Remember, you are resource constrained, have a big goal to hit, have limited time & money and hence you need to be smart in everything you do. Your team and your approach is your core differentiation. In venture capital parlance, “its all in the team”.

Once you have established that you have a decent understanding of the problem and can build some comfort in your audience that there is some chance of you solving this problem then you can start talking of raising funds. A startup generally needs outside funds for their high-risk high-rewards venture. This is where angels or VCs come into the conversation. See my note So you just ‘raised funds’. Good! But the journey has only begun

If you can answer yes to more of the points above, I think your business is deserving to be called a startup.