[ogreveins]

It makes sense to become profitable more quickly then. Github was profitable nearly from the get go. So was Atlassian. There's also that guy who lived in japan and made flash cards for teachers. There's also the guy who made You Need A Budget with just an excel spreadsheet and some charisma.

If your business idea is too big to make without large (seed investment size) amounts of funds then you should pick something else or get a job and slowly build it with your own income.

Suck it up.

[staunch]

This is actually the conventional wisdom despite nearly all of the evidence being against it.

You can name the few startups that have done what you're recommending, but every other (high growth) startup did it the way you're knocking.

A great many people try to create startups while maintaining day jobs. You don't hear about those ones, ever.

[danieltillett]

Sure the startups that make the most noise are typical VC backed businesses. The ones you don’t hear about are the ones where the founders control 100% of the business, are in highly profitable niches, and where they make a few million a year in profit which they get to keep.

These type of businesses get very little press, but they are very good to own and run - I of course know nothing about them :)

[tedmiston]

PlentyOfFish is a good example of this. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped...

Though by the traditional silicon valley definition of startup, the ones like you describe can be labeled something like lifestyle businesses, solopreneur ventures, etc. I think people like Chris Guillebeau (The $100 Startup), Jason Fried / DHH (blogs and books), and Marco Ament are successful people to read that are also good examples of starting businesses this way. Maybe even Tim Ferriss (4HWW).