Pidoco is turning 5 this month, which for many people means that we have moved from being a startup to becoming an established company. We’re wondering if the label should just be reserved for new companies, or if we will always be a startup as long as we keep our company culture.
For any company it’s important to celebrate the milestones, and for a startup the 5-year milestone seems especially important. One of the reasons for this may be that we hear and tell each other statistics about how many startups fail within the first five years.
Now that we have been around for five years, we thought we’d take a look at some definitions of a startup and give you some of our own. Please comment below with your own suggestions for what it means to be a startup.
Cambridge Dictionary: “A business that has just been started.”
Merriam Webster: “The act or an instance of setting in operation or motion.”
Wikipedia: “A partnership or temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”
Mashable: “Companies set up to test business models developed around new ideas.”
Eric Ries: “A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”
Silvan, co-founder of Pidoco: “You know you’re not a startup anymore when you have free time on the weekends.”
For the most part, being a startup has a lot to do with company culture. At Pidoco we don’t have hierarchies, we have a stand-up every day and we are still working towards the vision we set out when we founded the company. Please comment below with your own definitions of what it means to be a startup.