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by shkkmo 1276 days ago
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.