Your Startup Isn’t Really a Startup

I get tired of hearing this

Joe Procopio
5 min readMay 11, 2023

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I’ve been told that my startup isn’t really a startup several times over 25 years. Founders who come to me for help hear the same thing a lot. They’re told that their business, regardless of the innovation they’re fostering or even the money it’s making, isn’t really a startup.

I don’t have an answer for this. I’m just thinking maybe you’ve heard it too.

Here’s an example from my long-ago past, when I went out to raise money to derive a product from a consulting firm that was already solving huge problems for big companies and small companies alike.

It’s not really a startup. It’s a consulting firm.

Yeah, but it’s not about the consulting hours. It’s about building a reusable framework to help big inflexible companies run more like startups, with tools and software.

It’s not really a startup. It’s a consulting firm.

Yeah, but I’ve done this before, as an employee, Financial Dynamics evolved from a technical consulting firm into a company that just produced frameworks for other technical consulting firms and we got acquired for around 20x revenue in four years. It’s the same principle and I’m using the consulting firm to apply the strategy and it’s working.

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Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Building TeachingStartup.com. Write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com