[ak39]

>You want a life-style business.

Who doesn't? In the end, everyone is choosing a life-style. Life-style decisions should be the first and most important motivating factor for engaging in any business activity - not money, not growth. Life-style. Money and growth and all the tangible business indicators are at least an order of factor away from the real reason folks do business.

Folks wanting the venture funded path are also choosing that particular life-style: that of a pseudo-employer/boss with expectations and salaried "at-the-coal-face" employees arrangement. If this is what makes them happy, they are in it as much for that particular life-style.

You get what you want. Happily.

[thetmkay]

I think the "life" in life-style is the same "life" from work-life balance: ie, priorities outside of work. Therefore a lifestyle business is one where (supposedly) you sacrifice growth for time outside of work.

The problem with the phrase is that it's become an insult in many corners of the startup world, as if bootstrapping a business on your own to survive decades is not ambitious enough.

The parallel I thought of is getting in shape: becoming a body-builder (by living at the gym and taking steroids) or just be in good shape (by eating healthier and exercising regularly).

[tehayj]

For us its life work balance. I just started a small game studio because that's what I really like to do. It's already a retirement project, sort of, because I only have to make the strategic decisions for our business and someone else is handling all day to day business and scaling the company. I just dont want to abandon the game studio project now just to make some investors happy. We have positive cash flow anyway.

[lmm]

Some people want to spend a few years making big money to support the lifestyle they want in the future. Or want to prove a point / test a hypothesis, and consider that more important than their lifestyle.