Recently, the notion of a startup has bugged me, and not for the typical reasons. I know what a startup is, and I have many years experience with startups in one form or another. My confusion (or call it frustration) is that the general notion of a startup in the popular press has moved from “a business getting off the ground with the goal of making money” to “getting funding for an idea that may or may not ever make money”. This happened during Dot Com Bubble V1.0.
The two notions of startups couldn’t be more antithetical. I think this dichotomy will ultimately ruin a generation of entrepreneurs who could have build real value (i.e. businesses solving real problems), but instead wasted their time building fodder for a giant tech Ponzi scheme that ultimately only helps tech investors.