When was the word “startup” [or maybe “start-up”] coined as a term that describes a company at the initial stage of formation? I have done a bit of research, but not arrived at any firm conclusions. Personally, I do not think it was widely used before 1990.<\/p>\n
I guess we all have an idea of what a startup is, but its meaning does seem to be a little fluid …<\/p>\n
From time to time I have considered the idea of starting my own company. The idea of creating something new is attractive. On one occasion I came very close to actually doing it, but I was nervous about my cash flow projections and did not proceed. This turned out to be a good things because, as it turned out, I would probably have gone out of business inside a year as a result of a financial downturn. Mostly, I rather like the comfort and security, such as it is, of a salary coming in each month.<\/p>\n
The alternative was to join a startup, which is what I did in 1986. The company was Microtec Research, which had about two dozen employees, almost all in California. I was the #3 employee outside of the US. Although the company was about a decade old, it had a strong startup culture – mostly pragmatic and careful with money. An IPO took place in the early 1990s – somehow this did not result in a windfall for me. I was not really very clued up on stock options and things like that. In due course, we were acquired by Mentor Graphics, which is how I have ended up where I am now. A 5000 person, billion dollar, multi-national company is a long way from a startup!<\/p>\n
I have written about Evernote before<\/a> – I am a big enthusiast for their products and evangelize at the slightest opportunity, but I will refrain for the moment. Evernote are a Silicon Valley startup [assuming Redwood City might be considered to be part of Silicon Valley?]. They seem to have some interesting ideas about how to build and run a company. They talk about the concept of the 100 year old startup<\/a>. Broadly the idea is to build a company that can be sustained as a viable business, with a startup mentality, but not aim to be acquired after a few years. They feel that maybe this company culture can be maintained indefinitely. I will not be here in 95 years to see whether they have succeeded, but I will be interested to watch their progress over the next few years anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When was the word “startup” [or maybe “start-up”] coined as a term that describes a company at the initial stage…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[370,302],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-evernote","tag-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10217,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800\/revisions\/10217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5800"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=5800"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=5800"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}