At the end of the day your ultimate goal is to make money, that's all. I like the change you're suggesting. We're really just riding out the cultural wave that started when all the "dot coms" were startups, and so all tech companies under the meme of "two guys one VC" became "startups."
Historically you wouldn't be a startup if you bought three ships and sailed around the map to collect spices from India, but we might consider Christopher to have been a startup which collected VC funds from Spain before three ships came sailing.
We call them startups because our clan (two guys one VC) inherited the name from the businesses before us (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft). If you want to go and change the name you will have resistance, because that's what the name for our culture is. We're filled with names that don't truthfully reflect who we are, for instance, American is often thought of as the nationality of people from the USA, but that's silly because the Americas contain many more nations. Why aren't Mexicans considered Americans, yet Germans are considered Europeans? Everyone understands that Americans are from the USA, and Europeans are from Europe.
Everyone understands that tech companies are from the land of two guys who are trying to start a business with some funding. I like the idea of changing the name to something with great synergy for a new cloud-based webospher3.0 on the extranet, but to be totally honest it's simple re-branding of something most people involved with startups and VC understand. If your company is stuck starting up, I have a hard time believing it's simply because you called yourselves a startup. Many "businesses" are also in the same "startup" phase, and it's not because they call themselves businesses. I like the re-branding only because the name "startup" is a silly name, just like I wish we didn't call people from the USA a word that represents the population of two continents.
> Why aren't Mexicans considered Americans, yet Germans are considered Europeans?
I think you know this, but that's just a quirk of the language, that there's no euphonious way to say "United Statesan" since "States" isn't really a proper noun as a place name. "American" is a least-bad option.
Also, there could be other "United States" entities in the world. The USA isn't the only example of that construct. The demonym for a resident of the Federated States of Micronesia is "Micronesian".
Besides, "American" would be a bit too broad in applying to two whole continents. Nobody lumps Germans and Japanese together under "Eurasians". A Mexican is a "North American", which along with "South American" is a perfectly serviceable term and carries just about the same amount of specificity and meaning as "European".
Yes, naming is important, but it's also important to go along with established convention for meaningful communication. "Startup" conveys the potential of shoot-to-the-moon growth and profit that isn't possible in an established large company, and your listeners will lose some of that connotation if you switch to simply "business".
And Mexican is the demonym for people from... The United States of Mexico.
Likewise, a New Yorker can be someone from the state of New York, or someone from the City of New York.
Besides. Geologically/geographically there isn't one huge American Continent. There are two land masses. The North American continent in which North Americans live and the South American continent where South Americans live.
In that respect it's like the Eurasian continent. No one from the European and Asian continents call themselves Eurasian. There is a term 'Eurasian' but that's for people of mixed heritage.
Basically, the parent poster is tilting at windmills.
Historically you wouldn't be a startup if you bought three ships and sailed around the map to collect spices from India, but we might consider Christopher to have been a startup which collected VC funds from Spain before three ships came sailing.
We call them startups because our clan (two guys one VC) inherited the name from the businesses before us (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft). If you want to go and change the name you will have resistance, because that's what the name for our culture is. We're filled with names that don't truthfully reflect who we are, for instance, American is often thought of as the nationality of people from the USA, but that's silly because the Americas contain many more nations. Why aren't Mexicans considered Americans, yet Germans are considered Europeans? Everyone understands that Americans are from the USA, and Europeans are from Europe.
Everyone understands that tech companies are from the land of two guys who are trying to start a business with some funding. I like the idea of changing the name to something with great synergy for a new cloud-based webospher3.0 on the extranet, but to be totally honest it's simple re-branding of something most people involved with startups and VC understand. If your company is stuck starting up, I have a hard time believing it's simply because you called yourselves a startup. Many "businesses" are also in the same "startup" phase, and it's not because they call themselves businesses. I like the re-branding only because the name "startup" is a silly name, just like I wish we didn't call people from the USA a word that represents the population of two continents.