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Poll: Do you work at a startup?
27 points by ShaneCurran on April 25, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 43 comments
For the purposes of the poll, a startup can be defined as “a company working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed” and revenue does not exceed $10m per year.

If not, feel free to comment where or in what sector you work.

[I'd love to chat with you either way -- feel free to hit me up at shane at velodro.me]

Yes
303 points
No
255 points
Other (mention in comments)
5 points


"For the purposes of the poll, a startup can be defined as 'a company working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed'..."

I don't think there are that many companies, big or small, that are trying to solve problems whose solutions are obvious, and I'm pretty sure that there are no companies whose success is guaranteed.

For example, is it obvious what McDonald's should do to remain profitable in the long term? Should they open more locations or close some of their locations? Should they change their menu? Invest in robots to cook hamburgers? Pay their employees more? Give more independence to their franchisees?

Now ask the same questions about General Electric, which has many major lines of business (jet engines, medical imaging, lighting, etc.). I don't think there are any obvious solutions there either.


For most startups I've seen, the only not obvious solution is "does anybody need this, and how can we convince them that they do?". Unless the startup is heavy on experimental R&D, there seem to be very few where the technical solutions aren't obvious.


I work for Red Hat (http://www.redhat.com/), not remotely identified as a startup these days but I couldn't be happier with my job, work environment, and corporate culture.


I'm a founder of a startup in Brazil. We help doctors manage their clinics.


Nice! I'd love to chat. Feel free to email the address in the question or my profile.


Voted. I don't agree with the definition since most businesses are working to solve a problem where solution is not obvious esp guarantee.

Also if the revenue is anywhere in few mil then I wouldn't call that a startup. A startup is a business trying to find a scalable and repeatable business model. If a startup reaches few mil per year then it is no longer a startup.


Yes, we are a 2 man startup in customer success stories and how one can use them to get more leads/conversion from content marketing - http://rivet.ly. Right now we are pre-launch and busy coding!


Failed last 3 attempts. Slowly starting 4th one. This time as a research project spin-off.


I just began work at a startup for the first time. The company is about a year old, pre-revenue, and working on series B funding.

The caliber of people employed here is significantly higher than I am accustomed to working with.


Open source government transparency and governance data services.

I have been told by several of our customers that we aren't a startup anymore. But we are according to the criteria listed. Revenue $4.7m last year.


Education,

I come here to REALLY know what is going on in the tech industry. Usually find out about things I care about hours before 'others' around me do.


Front-end looking for work right now and trying to make this decision.

I like the energy of startups but finding the right group of people is hard.


I contract to a startup as a developer, but I'm not sure if that makes me 'in a startup' or not, so I put other.


Yes! I work for a startup in the PaaS space, http://hoistapps.com


Yes, I run the product and user experience for http://moov.cc


I work in Indianapolis at a software company in the higher ed. and municipal operations management sectors.


Which company? From Indy originally and worked for Matchbook Creative and then iGoDigital before making the jump to SF. Love working at the Speakeasy when I'm in town.


An interesting secondary poll is: Where does a startup stop being a startup in terms of revenue.


I don't see revenue taking part in the discussion other than showing you have a true business model. Having a stable, profitable business model means you're a small business and not a startup.

I also tend to start calling a company with 30+ employees a small business rather than a startup. You can't support that many employees without being a stable profitable company (ideally I suppose).


err, any company with decent funding can easily support over 30 ppl


Funding doesn't need to be able to support 30 people in order to be decent. What's decent depends on what the company needs.


No, but that's kind of misleading because I've worked for ten startups in the past.


How is that misleading? It says "Do you work at at startup", not "did you"


It's misleading because if anyone associates certain properties or beliefs to "startup people" vs. "big company" then they'd almost certainly draw the wrong conclusions about me from that answer. In other words, they would be misled. Likewise, any statistical correlation with other properties or beliefs would be skewed by people like me who were habitually one group but just happened to be in the other at the precise moment of asking. When gathering any sample, it can be useful to know about confounding factors or exceptions.


The poll isn't about you. A poll generally is about where a group of people stand at a given moment in time. There is nothing misleading about asking if someone currently works at a startup.


Oh, so it was asked without any intention whatsoever of drawing any conclusions that might be affected by the number of anomalies in that small sample? Do you know what the right thing is to do with extra information that you don't think affects the validity of a sample? Ignore it. There's no need to get on people's case for volunteering extra information just in case it would matter to someone interpreting it. The poll isn't about you either.


I'm glad I don't work at your big company


So am I.


Yes -- 4th time at a startup, first time as a cofounder. Marketing Analytics SaaS business.


"and revenue does not exceed $10m per year."

... would that mean Mojang isn't a startup?


I would definitely say that Mojang is no longer a startup. It's 5 years old and has a healthy revenue stream and a proven business model.


I once worked for a startup, that startup was acquired by Adobe now I work there.


Ditto. Viva la Omniture!


Not by your definition.


Yes. househappy.org located in Portland, OR.


Retail, going to start school soon instead.


Yes, I founded my own (solo tech founder)


Unemployed/Self employed. Freelance.


No. Working at a small web dev firm.


B2B finance tools, startup.


Post acquisition startup


Are you an employee of the purchaser or are you still working for the startup?


Still working for the startup




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