HN Explorer

Ask HN: What's the difference between a website and a startup?

13 points by sega01 ↗ HN
I received an email today. This person suggested I add my website to a list of startups. I won't turn down free and reasonable advertising, so I posted it: https://betapage.co/startup/sporestack

I've always thought of it as a service, since it accepts payment and gives you something in return. What exactly is a startup? I've worked at a couple -- I kind of think it's a marketing term. And well, almost certainly means pre-IPO.

5 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 23.0 ms ] thread
swampthinker
A website is a place for your startup to advertise itself and it's products. And in many cases, the website is the product.

A startup is a business. Pebble was a hardware startup that had a website. Facebook was a software startup that offered a social networking website.

As for what exactly a startup is, look no further than PG's own description: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

Alex3917
> What exactly is a startup?

A startup is a business that arbitrages a temporary economic disequilibrium to produce extraordinary growth.

Most startups have websites, some startups are entirely web based, but most websites have nothing to do with startups.

Veratyr
A website is simply a way to communicate. You can put information there and people can read it. Other people can send you information if you choose. You can allow other people to communicate with each other through it if you choose.

A startup in regular English is a recently begun business. It doesn't have to be tech related or doing anything spectacularly new, it could be a family run bakery in a small town.

A startup in HN English is a recently begun entrepreneurial business. It's trying to do something new and innovative and usually aims either to be acquired by a larger company or make absurdly large amounts of money and IPO.

rajnikant
A Startup is an aggressive business, and I think in modern terms it is something which is bridging a gap in the market. Regular traditional businesses are not considered in startups nowadays especially as per the definition of investors because normal business can not achieve huge growth as expected of a startup.

Website is something which is showing the information of an entity it can be a nonprofit organization or a business, so a website is not a business in itself as a startup. I checked your link of BetaPage and I think it is more like a startup

throwaway2016a
One definition I've heard that I like:

A startup is a company that hasn't found or proven a reproducible and sustainable business model yet.

Basically a startup is a company that hasn't yet found a way to reliably bring in enough money to operate. I think this definition can also apply to non-tech startups like a grocery store.