[spikeagally]

My understanding is that bootstrapped and lifestyle are different things. A lifestyle business should be able to run on autopilot with minimal involvement from the founder (hence they can focus on living their life, rather than working). A bootstrapped business is one built with your own capital - it doesn’t necessarily have to become a lifestyle business.

[shkkmo]

This seems mostly correct to me. We wouldn't call 37signals a "lifestyle business" but a bootstrapped business.

I wouldn't say that a "able to run on autopilot" is necessarily the defining feature, but rather the attitude towards growth. The simply, the goal in starting and running the business is to support a work-life balance that is more strongly weighted towards life. As such, growing a lifestyle business beyond a certain point is counter productive since that leads to a more responsibility and less time for other stuff.

A bootstrapped business does still have growth as a primary goal and there is intention to reach a larger size and complexity.

While I'm not sure that I like the term "lifestyle" to describe it, I'm not sure what a better one is since "bootstrapped" means something different in this context.

[ska]

> with minimal involvement from the founder (hence they can focus on living their life, rather than working).

I don't think this is right, most of the "lifestyle businesses" I've seen involve at least "normal" levels of work on their part, but are structured so that the work happens where & when suits other parts of their lives, or similar. At least the ones where that term made sense.

They are often located somewhere that causes some friction, or have opportunities to grow that they don't take on, etc.