[DigitalSea]

Whenever people question the definition of something being a startup I just point them to this wonderful Quora answer: http://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/What-is-the-proper-def...

Dave McClure makes a fair point that until a company works out the following three things, they're a startup, not a business.

1. What its product is,

2. Who its customers are.

3. How to make money.

So yes, a post-IPO company valued at $21B which still hasn't worked out two of those three items is still a startup in my opinion...

[dman]

Applying limits : as a large company unravels towards bankruptcy, it's business plans evaporating to ether it rapidly approaches the hallowed title of a startup. By the above metric sun was a startup post 2002, AMD is still a startup, Blackberry is a startup...