The Phoenix area has been seeing what strikes me as variants of "start-up porn", with many people and places referring to themselves or their services as in some way related to start-ups. In some cases it's true, but quite a number of these "start ups" are, for example, run-of-the-mill (albeit ambitious) Web design or Web marketing companies.

Now, it's great that people are opting to work for themselves rather than go join some large, likely boring and cumbersome, existing business, but the conflation of "start-up" with "business" makes it hard to really know what's going on here or discuss what people are doing.

Having a reasonably clear and useful definition is valuable.