startups

What’s the Difference Between a Small Business and a Startup?

It has become common, perhaps even fashionable, for new business ventures of all kinds to be described as startups. In truth, however, most of these entrepreneurial undertakings would be better classified as small businesses. Understanding the distinction between the terms isn’t just a matter of semantics, but an important question that can have implications for a budding business, informing everything from goals and expectations to strategies and funding models. Innovation and intent The roots of the differences between a startup and a small business begin with their respective approaches to two things: innovation and intent. Innovation is essential to every startup, because the whole enterprise is typically based on a big idea or new way of doing things, one designed to disrupt the existing order and offer an improved alternative......