As defined by Startup Haven: A venture-scale growth company does not deliver it’s principal customer value by human beings performing work for another person or company (i.e. a services company). A venture-scale growth company has as it’s intended trajectory one of significant scale — e.g., aiming for national or global reach and/or aiming to provide a product or service to a significant market. There are some exceptions, but they are rare. A venture-scale growth company founder is interested in building a company for which their financial incentives are not the money they make while they are building or running the company (i.e., their income) but, rather, the financial upside that comes from building a company of great value (typically through a liquidity event such as a merger, acquisition or IPO, but also sometimes through immense scale.) . A venture scale growth company need never raise venture capital, however the company they are building is of a kind that investors would recognize, in principle, as ‘investable.’