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On a question today on the main board about selecting software a clear and transparent vote to close was made. The well reasoned argument was that the issue was not specific to startups but was general to business.

It seems to me that most issues that have been and continue to be addressed by the board are not unique to start-ups but are addressed by all business at different stages of their development.

When do we draw the line and call something off-topic -- as too far removed from the start-up stage?

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3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

I believe that it is important to draw a line when the questions are so remotely related to startups that they draw upon an entirely different competence, which means that they are annoying for the startups community to see. To me, it would not be annoying to see a broad range of general business questions, but I do not know where this line is for others.

EDIT

I would especially be interested to hear the opinions of moderators on this, as questions are mostly closed by them.

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up vote 2 down vote

In the case of your example the questioner stated (after being challenged) that the topic was indeed critical to his startup. The challenger could not have reasonably known that before the questioner's statement. As a result, it would seem that giving a questioner the benefit of the doubt would be sensible. At any rate, the proper thing to do when in doubt would be exactly what the challenger did - open a dialog.

The other thing that comes up often is when does a company "graduate" from being a startup? My answer to that for the purposes of this forum would be when they have different problems than a startup. It isn't about the calendar. Google stopped being a startup very quickly and Virgin seems to still be one. I hope my company is a startup forever. It is a matter of objectives.

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What an excellent answer! I especially like the Virgin anecdote. – David May 20 '11 at 10:00
up vote 2 down vote

OK, I'm seeing this question too late, and my answer will probably live a quiet life at the bottom here.

IMHO, this is a variation of something that we have kind of discussed before. What throws us off course here is that "general business" is brought up, so it looks like a distinction done on startup versus general business. IMHO that isn't really the thing to focus on.

The critical part is a distinction between topics which are:

  • uniquely related to startups -- business plans, VC financing, product/market fit for example
  • versus
  • topics which concern a common technology or business process which just happens to be used by a startup.

The problem is that if you consider anything a startup happens to make use of on-topic, then in extremity everything is on-topic for this site. How to write HTML (for your startup website), which car to buy (for your first company car) and so forth. And thus the site will become unfocused and meaningless, a kind of discuss-everything-free-for-all like Slashdot or (shudder) Yahoo! Answers.

The above distinction is rarely a clear-cut one or the other decision, it's a judgement call.

I can remember how I first thought of this, but not find the conversation from back then (I think it was before we got a separate Meta site). The question was which hotel he should choose. My comment was that this was off-topic, he should go to Hotels.com or similar. He replied that he needed the hotel because he was in town to pitch investors; and so the question was clearly startup related. IMHO this is a good illustration of the slippery slope this line of thinking can lead to, and that some moderation is required.

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Great answer Jesper, you get my vote! I believe this is the discussion you are referring to: meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/69/… – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Jun 16 '11 at 0:53
@Jesper I was thinking about this question again in the context of the now merged question about when a company is not in a "start-up" stage. Something that there is clearly no consensus about. – Joseph Barisonzi Oct 14 '11 at 2:11
As I look at the items that you likes as uniquely related to startups: business plan? Every company should have a business plan no matter what their development stage. VC financing: The vast majority of financing for start ups does not come from VC -- and the majority of financing that is providing to start-ups is not exclusive to them. Product/market fit is an ongoing challenge with companies as all stages of their product lifecycle. I am not seeing that any of these are unique to startups. – Joseph Barisonzi Oct 14 '11 at 2:11
Perhaps the challenge for the "Beta" Onstartups of poor quality questions and limited engagement among experts is that the scope of "start-up' is simultaneously too narrow and too broad? – Joseph Barisonzi Oct 14 '11 at 2:11
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@Joseph Barisonzi: You understood my words broadly -- by "business plan" I did not mean a plan for operations (which every company should have), but rather the specific document which startups use when they pitch investors. VCs -- VCs generally don't fund late-stage companies. So I do think there are issues & topics which are unique to early-stage companies. My main problem with this site right now isn't in the definition of "startup", it's in the vague, overly broad, "please do my research for me" or "I'm not having this problem, just curious" questions that the site has too many of now. :-( – Jesper Mortensen♦ Oct 16 '11 at 13:37

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