In and Around Language: What's Up with "Startup"? With or
without the hyphen, the word “startup” is as puzzling as it is
ubiquitous. The Oxford English Dictionary Online defines it as
“a business enterprise that is in the process of starting up,”
usually as applied to a “startup company.” That seems about
right—but is the media misusing the phrase when referring to
Facebook, which was launched in 2004 and has long since finished
“starting up”? “People refer to Facebook as a startup—that’s not
accurate,” says Andrew J. Rosenthal, an MBA student at the
Harvard Business School who cofounded the Startup Tribe, a
campus group for student entrepreneurs seeking to launch new
businesses. “I visited Facebook’s headquarters in a rental car,
and I found out that they had valet parking. If you have valet
parking, people shouldn’t call your business a startup,” says
Rosenthal. For the moment, it seems, the startup is increasingly
associated with tech-based companies—even those that are now
well-established—because those a