[dmor]

I think this stigma exists because on some level, sometimes, when things suck at your high growth crazy startup (even if its just a bad day or week) you think, "man I wish I ran a skate shop in Huntington Beach with an online store". And it stings to see other people doing that.

It's a lot harder to delay gratification and swing for the fences, not just intellectually harder but emotionally harder. Sometimes I feel like my friends doing lifestyle businesses just don't understand what I'm going through, and other times they give me really bad advice that would be great if I was building a company to operate like their's but doesn't do anything for me at scale.

My family business is a lifestyle business in finance, I worked there from age 14 - 20, and its a totally different animal from a startup. Because it isn't a startup, its a self-sustaining business. Was after 12 months. So it makes me think a lifestyle startup is a myth - these aren't startups, they're small businesses trying to dine out on the glory of the name "startup" without takin the risk. What do you think?

[gujk]

Most startups are flights of fancy trying to dine out on the glory of the name "startup". Let's all get back to work trying to create real value for customers and enjoying our world, and not posture for social rank among friends and strangers.

[generalk]

  > these aren't startups, they're small businesses trying to 
  > dine out on the glory of the name "startup" without takin 
  > the risk

The only difference between a "lifestyle" business and a "high growth crazy startup" is that in one, you're betting small amounts over a long period of time. If one of your bets fails, you're not broke.

In a more VC-style startup, you're betting most everything up front. Pardon the gambling metaphor, but this allows you to play higher-stakes games, but this also means that when you lose, you lose your whole roll.

They're all businesses, the founders are all entrepreneurs. We're all in this together.

[fleitz]

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is what I think.

I don't care about the 'glory' of a startup, glory is something you tell stupid 18 year old kids so they feel good about going to die for 60 year old kids.

If you can make money with out risk you're an idiot to go and find a business with lots of risk controlled by someone else.

Don't dig for gold, sell shovels!

Did you know that the people who sell plastic wrap for hard drives have a higher profit margin than those who make hard drives? Think about the ramifications of that for a second.

Laugh inside when you get made fun of for not having the stomach to risk digging for gold. Enjoy your life find your esteem from yourself and not from the opinions of the masses, it's you who has to live your life, not the others commenting on it. If raising VC makes you happy, then raise VC. If a lifestyle biz makes you happy run a lifestyle biz. If being a programmer in a cubefarm at a megacorp makes you happy, do that!

[guylhem]

"I don't care about the 'glory' of a startup, glory is something you tell stupid 18 year old kids so they feel good about going to die for 60 year old kids."

Beautiful :-) But what about passion?

"Did you know that the people who sell plastic wrap for hard drives have a higher profit margin than those who make hard drives? Think about the ramifications of that for a second."

No I didn't, but that's very interesting. Yet I doubt anyone here would be funding a company making new plastic wraps.

[fleitz]

I'd put passion largely in the same category of glory. It's an emotional good used to get people to accept lower returns.

I'll use the video game industry as an example, people are passionate about writing video games, their not passionate about not being able to see their family and friends for weeks. People are told they need to sacrifice to follow their passion but really they are sacrificing so the company can hit some arbitrary date and extract more rev from each employee, eventually to be discarded by the company when they are no longer profitable.

If your passionate about video games it's probably better to get a iPhone / Android / XNA dev account and make video games than to go work for a video game company (or your VC).

People are passionate about leaving their mark on the world via a business, not making sure their VC gets their 2X earn out.

[viscanti]

I disagree. You need to solve a problem you're passionate about. Not all problems are BIG problems that require massive scale or raising money.

Lifestyle startups aren't a myth. They're just working on a different scale of problem than the VC backed startup. I don't know that there's anything inherently better about either, but treating a lifestyle startup as a scalable startup, or vice versa is a mistake. They're separate entities, with different goals. Each has it's pros and cons.

[dmor]

some businesses are just businesses, not startups, and thats ok.

[viscanti]

I suppose our definition of "startup" differs. It seems a startup can only be a startup if it's attempting to solve a problem that requires significant upfront capital and scaling. I disagree with that view.

For me, a startup is a company exploring the solution to a problem. That can be a BIG problem and that requires significant scaling, or it can be a smaller problem. Once that solution is found, and can be replicated easily, it's no longer a startup.

The question is, how long can a startup be a startup? I'd argue that as soon as any scaling is involved, it's no longer a startup and it's just a business. Startup implies that it's the start. Lifestyle businesses and regular businesses can both be guilty of claiming to be a startup long after they've become "regular" businesses.

When it comes down to it, they're all just businesses, but it can be helpful to have terms to distinguish the scale of the business. If you feel that lifestyle businesses and lifestyle startups are diminishing the prestige of startups, then you're probably in business for the wrong reason. That smacks of too much ego and too little passion for solving the problems you should be solving.

[potatolicious]

Reading this thread, I can't help but have the thought:

We're really arguing about semantics. This is the definition "startup" in the Silicon Valley echo chamber vs. the definition of "startup" everywhere else in the world.

Sometimes I rather dislike the term - it seems to, at least in a small way, justify the bubblicious way many companies in our field are run, particularly in the Valley. Can you imagine saying to someone "I run my own business" and then be unable to answer "so what do you drive revenue from"?

It seems to me in this community there's a tendency to believe that "startup" businesses (as SV likes to define it) somehow transcend the traditional rules of business, and this quibbling over nomenclature doesn't help at all. By believing that you're "not just like those antiquated 'businesses'", you're more liable to, well, do things like run a company without a plan for revenue.