Terminology matters

Few things are as important as common understanding and definitions. Without knowing exactly what specific terms mean, and how they apply to given situations, little discourse startup or ecosystems development can take place. In developing startups and startup ecosystems, there are still many terms that are misunderstood or misused.

There's no standardised definition of what is a startup. Wherever we work, whoever we ask, entrepreneurs, support organisations, investors, governmental entities, etc. have their own understanding and definition of the startup term, what makes difficult to develop any ecosystem.

Here's a definition based on the startup development phases​ you can use in your local context in case you are still missing it. It was defined with the main goal to make it as complete, global and neutral as possible:

​“A Startup is a team of entrepreneurial talent developing new innovations, in identifiable and investable form, in progress to validate and capture the value of the created innovation - with ambition to grow fast with scalable business model for maximum impact.” ​

​And then, use that definition combined with the evaluation tool below to assess the potential of any startup in your ecosystem:

Wondering how the whole ecosystem can adopt it and become a standard? Get to know more here