The main requirement for starting up a company seems to be enough finance to get it through it's first six years. Quality Control is a factor but tends to be under played in the startup phase.

The problem is that you don't know the customer when you first start out. According to Steve Blank most companies fail because they don't sell a product to actual existing customers they guess who will be their customer, and miss on the guess.

The result is that they miss on the Minimal Product they produce, and don't get any market share.

He recommends a fast prototyping approach to the Minimal Product, where you try to quickly approximate what you think the customer wants, and instead of looking to make points on quality, try to get information on who the customers are. The idea is that the Original Customers are early adopters, and are easily impressed, the real market takes time to develop, or already has competition, to get to know the real market requires that a concerted effort at customer discovery be done.

From a business perspective, starting out with a poor quality product that meets the needs of the customer is recoverable, but not starting out with a product that fails to capture the needs of the customer. The Start-up phase continues until the business finds a good customer/product fit.

From a Technology perspective this is harsh, since it means that the product that ends up being made is not necessarily the product you set out to make in the first place.

Quality Control is important but a good quality product that fails to connect with customer needs is not a good business risk.

For this reason, Waterfall Techniques which are good for quality products are not at all suitable for a start-up business. For this reason, it should be understood that the start-up phase is a unique business model, and that it requires a different management style than Technological Development in a mature business.

Entrepeneurs that are good at start-ups are not necessarily good at running Tech Development Companies as a result. As a result, either the company is sold once it has proved it has a viable product, the management team is changed, or the entrepeneur has to learn a new management style half-way through the start-up stage.

The Entrepeneur who can get the start-up and the tech development stages right, is a rare bird. As such, Engineers are trained to do tech development and entrepeneurs are trained to begin start-ups.

If you want to understand more about Steve Blanks work there is a course on coursera on start-ups. He recommends that the course not be done by a single person but done by a team where different specialties can factor out of the team as the minimum product approaches product fit.

Hi Graeme, thnx a lot for extended answer. I studied Steve Blank (i take MIT and Stanford online courses on technology entrepreneurship) and I am just about to finish translation to Croatian great book from Stanford - Technology Ventures. I mentioned quality control and biz analysis just as example as think such a techniques could be of use for young entrepreneurs. 

And all what you mentioned in your post is in domain of entrepreneurship - not understand why in most of the cases in research is called startups.  

I like definition that entrepreneurship  is "pursuing opportunity beyond resources you control" https://hbr.org/2013/01/what-is-entrepreneurship - then why to mess up such a beautiful discipline with startup term (which is fuzzy and time dependent) - in a way startups run for investors and their finical resources so they could pursuit opportunity with resources. they exchange share in company for resources - they are not pursuing opportunity beyond resources they control. What entrepreneur and his venture past particular years of operations they are not entrepreneurs any more ? or they change the way of doing business ? 

Essentially once you have a product/customer fit, you have to change the way you do business because you know who your customer is. Instead of spending the majority of your time searching for the customer, you spend it taking advantage of the opportunity that you now control. In research, you have to know the end user of the technology in the same way you have to know who your customer is. Either that or your thesis will get lost in the shuffle, and never see the light of day.

Steve Blank transferred his course to science disciplines because the funders at the grant level were asking for their students to have the same success as the Venture Capitalists.

When you are writing a grant proposal you have to think in much the same way that an entrepeneur has to think when financing a new business.

You remain in start-up mode until you have enough of a reputation and enough grant money floating through your hands to control your finances.

Then you become a senior scientist and others apply to you for funding.

So far as my knowledge is concern, Startup is simply starting any business whereas technology entrepreneurship is doing business with technical products.

Technology Entrepreneurship and Startups are branches of same trees with same roots called 'Venture Creation' and are often used interchangeably. 

To me Startup is more of millennial and trendy term evolved and popularized by silicon Valley folks. 

But if at all we have to ruminate and classify these terms further, here is how I would go about it.  

Start-up pertains more to the phase of a venture creation and often considered risky as it's dealing with many unknowns, operating in search mode. It can be further classified as ideation phase, prototype phase,  etc. Entrepreneurship is 

Technology Entrepreneurship is a domain with in entrepreneurship such as Social Entrepreneurship  etc. where Technology plays pivotal role in solving a perceived or defined problems.  In short, Technology aids or enables the solution. 

The reason the Technology Entrepreneurship may be studied under special category is due to the sheer risk factors associated with it and required resources and lead times to realize the solution.  Eg: Clean Energy, Genome Technologies etc, 

You can be interested to a recent article of mine; regards. MV

Any new venture beginning from scratch may be considered a start up - a new restaurant, a new retail store, etc.   Technology entrepreneurship refers to the creation of a new product, new service, or new venture based on ideas from science and technology.

Thnx 2 all 4 answers so far (will try to summarise them soon and publish here)

here is article from Forbes trying to define start up company

http://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2013/12/16/what-is-a-startup/

i understand that this is not academic literature - but some definition from this article are more related to technology entrepreneurship then start up - and this is why i am concern about the terminology

You might have a look to the attached article