a business makes money selling a product or service.

a startup makes money selling the startup

That's a good way of putting it But this is also the set of incentives that produces spaghetti code because "we're gonna get acquired in two years"

it's also the set of incentives that produces not-technically-illegal pump and dump schemes when the startup is sold to the market via IPO

> The end result of a business is a lemonade stand or a barber or donut shop, the end result of a startup is OpenAI or Google.

That's a bit disingenuous. The more comparable end result for a coffee shop is Starbucks. Or Amazon if you want to talk about books

pg would argue Starbucks the Umbrella group is startup as it's an franchise operation focussed on growth. A single instance of Starbucks is a business focussed on turning a profit.

In fact even the name YC is YCombinator, which in programming is a "function that produces functions" and YC is supposed to be a startup that produces startups. Here Starbucks (Umbrella) is a startup that produces coffee shops (Starbucks).

You can define startup or business however you like it's not a legally protected term. Just around these parts that's what it means and I personally find the distinction useful when reasoning about what does and doesn't have high growth potential.