Startup company

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A startup company or start-up is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets. The term became popular internationally during the dot-com bubble when a great number of dot-com companies were founded. A high tech startup company is a startup company specialized in a high tech industry.

Contents

• 1 Evolution of a startup company
• 2 Startupers
• 3 See also
• 4 Further reading
• 5 References

[edit] Evolution of a startup company

Startup companies can come in all forms, including those that aresimply life-style companies, but the phrase "startup company" is oftenassociated with high growth, technology oriented companies. Investorsare generally most attracted to those new companies distinguished bytheir risk/reward profile and scalability. That is, they have lower bootstrapping costs, higher risk, and higher potential return on investment.Successful startups are typically more scalable than an establishedbusiness, in the sense that they can potentially grow rapidly withlimited investment of capital, labor or land.

Startups enjoy several unique options for funding. Venture capital firms and angel investors may help startup companies begin operations, exchanging cash for an equity stake. In practice though, many startups are initially funded by the founders themselves. Factoring is another option, though not unique to start ups.

A critical task in setting up a business is to conduct research inorder to validate, assess and develop the ideas or business concepts inaddition to opportunities to establish further and deeper understandingon the ideas or business concepts as well as their commercial potential.

If a company's value is based on its technology, it is often equallyimportant for the business owners to obtain intellectual propertyprotection for their idea. The newsmagazine The Economist estimated that up to 75% of the value of US public companies is now based on their intellectual property (up from 40% in 1980).^[1]Often, 100% of a small startup company's value is based on itsintellectual property. As such, it is important for technology orientedstart up companies to develop a sound strategy for protecting theirintellectual capital as early as possible.^[2]

Startup companies, particularly those associated with newtechnology, sometimes produce huge returns to their creators andinvestors – a recent example of such was Google,whose creators are now billionaires through their share ownership.However, the failure rate of startup companies is very high. Based on aresearch, founder CEOs of high-techcompanies can typically expect their stock to be worth about $6,500,000(statistical average) if the company succeeds in going public(in 1997)^[3]

While there are startup businesses created in all types ofbusinesses, and all over the world, some locations and business sectorsare particularly associated with startup companies. The Internet bubbleof the late 1990s was associated with huge numbers of internet startupcompanies, some selling the technology to provide internet access,others using the internet to provide services. Most of this startupactivity was located in Silicon Valley, an area of northern California renowned for the high level of startup company activity.

A company may cease to be a startup as it passes various milestones,such as becoming profitable, or becoming publicly traded in an IPO, or ceasing to exist as an independent entity via a merger or acquisition.

[edit] Startupers

Startupers is a term used in the software industry to describe people involved in the creation of high tech startups. Typically, startupers are entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, software engineers, web developers, and others involved in the ground level of a new high tech venture.