It’s not obvious to me that a “nobody wants this” megaproject by a decades old multinational forced to succeed by government mandate wasting over a decade debating national workshare is a great example of a “startup in aerospace”.

There’s tons of startups making cool fused harnesses and phased arrays and trying to get every permutation of diesel and electric and hydrogen engines certified. Drones and rc aircraft spawn many “built in a dorm room” prototypes for people who don’t value their eyebrows

> It’s not obvious to me that a “nobody wants this” megaproject by a decades old multinational forced to succeed by government mandate wasting over a decade debating national workshare is a great example of a “startup in aerospace”.

It looks like I wrote that in a confusing way! My intention was to ask about what features of the engineering discipline was motivating OP's comparison. Maybe a better series of comparisons would have been...

- the 747 – program conception in '63, delivery in '69; – the A350 - first sales in '05, delivery in '13;

which I think captures the slow pace, and large dependency chain, of any significant program beyond a revision.

I have no idea how you could think a startup is comparable to a project that ended up costing 25 billion dollars to devolop and involved something like 15k engineers. It's began development in 1988 and the first flight wasn't until 2005.

I want to ask you, what do you think a startup is?

I'm a little confused by what you mean with your question? I was trying to ask what features of an engineering discipline OP was pointing towards with his comparison. I wasn't intending to describe what the next generation of startups might look like!

You probably aren't building the next Airbus in a dorm room, but you might build a weird propulsion prototype, simulation tool, control system, manufacturing technique that eventually becomes the reason a company exists