I buy the 'grow rapidly' part - but what does venture funding and hiring part have to do with it? Take 37Signals (your own example) as an obvious counter example.<p>I'd argue that 'scalability' is an important component of a startup though. I don't think anyone would consider a consultancy to be a startup - although many do meet your three criteria. They don't scale since there is an upper bound to revenue per employee (while a software product/website has no such bound).