[wanorris]

A lifestyle business is a particular type of business, and a startup is another distinct type. They each have different requirements and business models, just as either one is different from a large public corporation.

Most of the Silicon Valley startup infrastructure is basically extraneous to a lifestyle business. Incubators, angel investors, VCs, all the other support pieces built for rapid growth -- all of that is geared toward businesses that have a chance of getting huge and IPOing and giving back a huge return to everyone who helped it along.

With a lifestyle business, by contrast, you tend to self-finance, you shepherd your cash and investments carefully, and if you need to expand, you might go talk to your bank about a line of credit and show them your cash flow and consistent returns to date in order to help secure it.

Lifestyle businesses can be great. My dad has a successful retail store, a low-stress environment, a great house, and plenty of time to enjoy it all. We should all be so lucky. They're just not the same thing as startups.