[clintavo]

However, I think a lifestyle business can evolve into a startup. These discussions sometimes seem to forget that life isn't always neatly planned out in advance. For those of us living outside of the Valley, the tech community needs to remember that not everyone and their brother is plotting their next "startup."

What can happen is (and this is an amazing thing about the times we live in) that a side project takes off, slowly becomes profitable, allows the founder to quit his job, focus on it full-time and then one day, he looks up and thinks "wow, I could swing for the fences." I guess that could be classified as a "lack of ambition" for not having a vision in the first place. OTOH it could be considered a smart move because the founder has already made something people want.

Mailchimp, Balsamiq, DuckDuckGo to an extent, and in a smaller way, my own "startup" are examples.