What kind of company is a start-up company?

If you read the tech media a lot, you'll see the occasional mention of "start-up companies" in the text. Many people think startups are the laggard giants that are fast growing, hoping to be the next park-high maintenance cost that no longer allows robots to offer sake to guests every Thursday.

So what kind of company is the start-up company? I ask this question because a large number of companies are often branded as "start-up companies," but they are not. Is Uber a start-up company? Of course not. Your crazy uncle in the basement. The company that helped people stick the tail fin more firmly on a toy rocket is a start-up company? No, it's a company that's doomed to fail.

A technology company was founded only a year ago, only 14 employees, the total financing of 437,000 U.S. dollars, each month in a large amount of money to maintain quarterly sales growth, it is not a start-up? The answer is yes.

Of course, there is a vague zone on the definition of startups, and I'm here to help you clarify.

For startups, everyone has their own definition, but almost every person's definition is wrong. I raised this question on Twitter, and the answer is all the same: has it withstood the test of profitability? Its establishment time? Its management structure?

I have also consulted a number of venture capitalists on this issue, and the Epic Ventures Christopher Calder (Christopher Calder) raised the issue of management, and the Murphy (Matt Murphy) of Mr Peng Hua Ying raised the issue of profitability, while Charles River Rafael Clars (Rafael Corrales) argues that startups should be defined from a growth perspective.

On these issues, Amazon's losses are very serious, Uber has been founded for more than 5 years, even if the start-up companies in the initial period can have a very strict management structure. Therefore, each of the recommendations given above does not fully define the characteristics of the start-up company.

Instead, I think we can define startups based on the rules of "50", "100" and "500"--a rule that I created myself. Here's my interpretation of the rule: if your company meets any of the following criteria, you should take off the "uniform" of the start-up, and realize that you are just another tech company seeking to implement an IPO or try to avoid an initial public offering:

Revenue operating rate (revenue run rate) 50 million (technologists) USD (first 12 months);

The total number of employees in 100 people and above;

Valued over 500 million technologists dollars.

So, if your company is valued at 499 million dollars and has 99 employees, and the current annual revenue turnover is 49 million dollars, congratulations, you still belong to the start-up company. (In fact, if your company's valuations are 10 times times that of future revenue and each employee earns close to 500,000 dollars, you're a start-up.) ）

These three digital--50, 100, and 500--can indeed be useful and enduring general criteria for defining startups.

Here are a few examples to illustrate this point. Mattermark and Buffer are start-up companies. Mattermark's valuation after the new round of financing, annual recurrent income and the total number of employees were 25 million U.S. dollars, 1.5 million dollars and 27 people-all three data are up to standard. Buffer in the last round of financing after the valuation of 60 million U.S. dollars, the current operating rate of 4.8 million U.S. dollars, the number of employees 30 people. It also reaches the standard!

However, the remaining members of Millet, Uber and the Unicorn Club are no longer unicorn, they are "unicorns". What kind of company belongs to the unicorn? That is, technology companies that have been financing in the context of quantitative easing and low interest rates since 2010, when the loose financing environment has allowed private companies to opt out of the market – we can view it as an early-stage enterprise. Their valuations reach or exceed 1 billion dollars.

But even if the unicorn is an early-developing enterprise, they still don't belong to startups.

Finally, who would think of a company valued at $40 billion trillion as a start-up company? The normal definition of listed companies of different sizes is as follows:

Small stock: Market value between 300 million US dollars to 2 billion U.S. dollars

Mid-Stock: The market value between 2 billion U.S. dollars to 10 billion U.S. dollars

Market share: More than 10 billion dollars

So, according to normal and open market statistics, the valuation of $40 billion trillion Uber not only falls far short of the "start-up" standards, but also, according to our rules, is no less valued than some of the companies with the highest market capitalisation today. There are many companies that are growing fast, but not everyone is a start-up company.

When you go to bed today, please keep in mind the three numbers: 50, 100, and 500. Don't thank me.