[extrapickles]

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.

Basically the goal of the company is to keep the owners comfortable rather than play the unicorn lottery.

[vonmoltke]

> Basically the goal of the company is to keep the owners comfortable rather than play the unicorn lottery.

Why are those the only two options? What happened to "grow organically into a megacorp over 20-30 years"?

[extrapickles]

That would be a regular business. A lifestyle business the goal is to give the owner a job they like without the distractions a larger company would have because the owner/founder likes doing the work.

It is possible to start lifestyle then transition to regular or be a blend (eg: currently lifestyle, but keeping a eye out to grow). Sparkfun is a example of this where the founder hired someone to be CEO so they can actually have time to do the stuff they love.

[0]: https://www.sparkfun.com/news/2162

[Fomite]

Even beyond that, there's a huge space between "Keep their owners comfortable" and "Unicorns".