Lifestyle Businesses vs Startups

There's a difference between a "startup" and a "lifestyle business".

You work for a life style business not a growth company. If you want a startup, go find one.

I generally call small businesses like that a lifestyle business rather than a startup.They don't return huge amounts of money, but they are not going to disappear overnight as they have the market cornered on one or two very small niches (eg: the entire worldwide demand for the product they offer is $0.5-5mil). In my experience, a lifestyle businesses has found a problem that a dozen or two midsized companies have and precisely solves it or produces a low volume customizable product.

Those are "lifestyle businesses", this is a "startup". They're different, because reasons...

The goal is to make a return on investment. A successful lifestyle business doesn't generally make money for investors, or at least they expect to make more money from moonshot massive growth companies. So VCs will absolutely kill a potential or existing small, sustainable company for a chance at a billion-dollar company, even if the odds are tiny. For the founders, a lifestyle business is generally a better option, a) because it's their effort on the line, and b) because they don'

I would argue that all businesses are lifestyle businesses. Dreaming of a lifestyle that involves 10 houses and a yacht? Become a VC, or join a company backed by one and hope it becomes a unicorn. Astronomical wealth and power are a LIFESTYLE, the same way that dreaming of a modest home, work that you love, and time to spend on meaningful relationships is a lifestyle.Just try to avoid judging the lifestyles of others.

I just don't see the "plot" by VC's.A lifestyle business is one that isn't meant to grow beyond a certain point because it's "enough". Obviously, a business like that is not likely to "change the world" ala Google or Apple or something, but it's probably more realistic for many of us.

First, stop calling any business a lifestyle business. Business is always hard no matter how much time you put into it. I run a bootstrapped SAAS bsiness that grew "only" 20% last year. I know that is not even close to what VCs want if I wanted money but that 20% growth was great for our team and we can continue to working on building a great sustainable and profitable business. However, I can assure you there is nothing "lifestyle" about it. As the founder, I grind my ass as

Most entrepreneurs do focus on lifestyle businesses. (Although they wouldn't call them that.) VC driven businesses just happen to be the focus of this site. For some people, it makes more sense to focus on VC style hypergrowth businesses. Succeeding with a lifestyle business is no less difficult, so might as well swing for the fences, especially if someone else will foot the bill.

What you described is what's called a 'lifestyle business', not a startup.See eg http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html and https://www.ycombinator.com/library/En-what-is-a-startup