# Startup company

A startup company (startup or start-up) is an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly emerged, fast-growing business that aims to meet a marketplace need by developing or offering an innovative product, process or service. A startup is usually a company such as a small business, a partnership or an organization designed to rapidly develop a scalable business model.

## Quotes

    Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author
* A startup is a temporary organization in search of a scalable, repeatable, profitable business model.
** Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. The Startup Owner’s Manual, K&S Ranch, 2012, p. xvii.
* Start-ups are not smaller versions of large companies. They do not unfold in accordance with master plans. The ones that ultimately succeed go quickly from failure to failure, all the while adapting, iterating on, and improving their initial ideas as they continually learn from customers.
** Steve Blank, "Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything", Harvard Business Review, May 2013
* Change the external culture and environment, and entrepreneurship can bloom regardless of its source—nature or nurture.
** Steve Blank, "Here’s what it actually takes to make it as an entrepreneur", Washington Post, 28 April 2014.
* The safest bet about your new business is that you’re wrong... A startup is not about executing a series of knowns. Most startups are facing a series of unknowns — unknown customer segments, unknown customer needs, unknown product feature set, etc.
** Steve Blank "Steve Blank Challenges Federal Government To Learn Entrepreneurship", Forbes, 12 December 2014
* Startups are not just about the idea, they're about testing and implementing the idea.
** Steve Blank "6 Success Secrets From the Most Influential Tech CEOs", Entrepreneur.com, 1 July 2016.
* Software has to be designed by hackers who understand design, not designers who know a little about software. If you can't design software as well as implement it, don't start a startup.
** Paul Graham, "The Other Road Ahead", September 2001.
* Startups don't win by attacking. They win by transcending. There are exceptions of course, but usually the way to win is to race ahead, not to stop and fight.
** Paul Graham, "Mean People Fail", November 2014.
* It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing, and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.”
** Steve Jobs, "Here’s what it actually takes to make it as an entrepreneur", Washington Post, 28 April 2014.
* The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.
** Rob Kalin, Etsy founder, "The Best Startup Advice From 14 Tech Heroes" Forbes, 9 Jan 2014.
* A ‘startup’ is a company that is confused about three things: (1.) What its product is. (2.) Who its customers are. (3.) How to make money.
** Dave McClure, "The Best Startup Advice From 14 Tech Heroes" Forbes, 9 Jan 2014.
* Business models and value propositions expire like a yogurt in the fridge.
** Alexander Osterwalder in foreword to: Stefanie Auge-Dickhut, ‎Bernhard Koye, ‎Axel Liebetrau (2015), Customer Value Generation in Banking: The Zurich Model of Customer-Centricity. p. ix
* [A startup is] a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
** Eric Reis, "These 12 Remarkable Veterans Changed Business Forever", Entrepreneur.com, 21 March 2017.
* There's a growing mismatch between the skills that business schools teach and what fast-paced startups require.
** Vivek Wadhwa. "Should You Recruit MBAs?" Inc. Magazine. 25 July 2013.

## See also

* Entrepreneurs