When is a Startup No Longer a Startup?

Yesterdays news that pharmaceutical-maker Roche is bidding to increase on it's already majority share of San Francisco-based Genentech leads me to wonder at what point do we stop calling a biotech startup - a startup? Genentech employs over 11,000 people - hardly a small company - and is one of Fortune Magazine's "best places to work". While their focus remains on innovation and new drug development, somewhere along the way this company, with lots of help (startup funding?) from the "big guys", has become one of them. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I often get the feeling people equate biomedical research and biotechnology with smaller companies and startups. It's time to change that mentality and accept that biotech is here to stay and that there are now a significant number of large, well-established and financially stable biotech businesses throughout the world.