In my experience, the biggest difference between a startup and small business is that a startup feels intense pressure to scale up the business before

A small business, on the other hand, generally scales hiring/marketing/sales along with their current revenue growth. It’s a bottom-up approach to building a business, wherein you scale as your company’s fundamentals incrementally improve. My current company is a newsletter-based business where we’re making fun of the tech industry (

Both approaches can make sense, it’s just all about your goals (both as an employee looking for work at either or as a founder building a company).