What [startup investors] essentially said was, “If big companies are doing [business] plans, we want a plan. Big companies do five-year forecasts, so obviously before we invest we need to see the forecast.” And “Big companies hire sales, marketing, and [business development] people on Day 1, that’s what we want you, the startup, to do.” And “Big companies build their products with waterfall engineering, which is a serial process that specifies all the features and then works for the next year or two to delivering them for Release 1.0.” Startups are not smaller versions of large companies. Large companies are large because they execute a known business model. But it wasn’t until I retired and started thinking about this that I realized it was wrong—big time! Startups are not smaller versions of large companies. Large companies are large because they execute a known business model. A known business model is 95% of what large companies do. It’s “Gee, we know our channel, we know our customers, we know our pricing, we know our competitors, we know lots of stuff.” And most of this stuff is continuing to fill the pipeline with product line extensions and new features, painting it blue or whatever. That is a known business model.