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by robertlagrant 966 days ago
You're buying into the false dichotomy. A lifestyle business isn't organic growth. It's sitting on a beach pulling in $20k/mo for your Gmail plugin, or getting to buy lots of cool cameras which you love, paid for by your camera-based Youtube channel. There's a whole world of businesses that exists between unicorns and lifestyles.
2 comments
busterarm 966 days ago
Also it's a false dichotomy mainly pushed on you by venture funds to encourage you to play in their world.

Bootstrapped tech startups have such low costs and labor as to make other traditional small-business owners jaws hang on the floor in envy.

Unicorn money is a distraction that's keeping everyone's eye off the ball and deluding people into ignoring the power in their fingertips.

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cjbgkagh 966 days ago
The low cost base also means it’s really hard to compete against. A lot of VC money is aimed at monopolizing a niche and extracting long term above average returns out of it. Having a lifestyle company operating in their niche destroys that as a possibility and means they’ll never be able to get the returns they want.
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j4yav 966 days ago
Which is an interesting perspective if you're considering a lifestyle business. Can you build a small but meaningful competitor and draft off all the treasure some VC is plowing into r&d and marketing?
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cjbgkagh 966 days ago
In my niece they spend all their money on playing dirty with being cozy with govt and basically none on r&d. Eventually I’ll be able to beat them in price and product quality but for now I make a living on being the low cost alternative.
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robertlagrant 964 days ago
> Having a lifestyle company operating in their niche destroys that as a possibility

Can you give an example of how that destroys what they're doing?

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robertlagrant 966 days ago
I don't think it's pushed really. Certainly not on me.
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ska 966 days ago
It can be as simple as where the business is located.

Perhaps the useful definition of a lifestyle business is one where explicitly part of business's purpose is to achieve personal non-business goals for one or more people involved. They can be tiny or fairly large, though at some point the distinction probably loses meaning.

Like the difference between a "startup" and a "new business" they can be useful distinctions but are often used sloppily.

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