[jacquesm]

> Frequently, a startup is their option of last resort--since the working world has already failed them.

That's an excellent observation and I had not taken this into account. This may be one of the reasons why start-ups are so attractive to people with issues in some area, it affords them the freedom to write their own ticket.

The problem with that is that start-ups aren't really a solution for the problem, it will most likely just end up making things (much) worse. Treatment is.

Life-style level businesses might be a good choice, you get to write your own ticket and yet don't have to deal with extreme stress (normally speaking, of course even then this could happen, you can't rule it out, you probably can't rule it out in any situation but doing a sink-or-swim start-up pretty much guarantees it).

[pyalot2]

You know that the line between a startup and a life-style business is pretty much non existent of course. Oh, and before we go into that "it's all immense stress, don't do it" thing, ever noticed how a ton of startups/founders are very fond of balancing this to be a lifestyle choice?

Anyhow, stress/failure isn't the only contributing factor to a balanced mental life. Even somebody with a more varied emotional makeup can deal with stress and failure. There are a host of other factors that have to work as well, and sorry, holding a job for some people just doesn't deliver them.

[jacquesm]

There is a huge difference between a life-style business and a start-up. Though the one could grow into the other the chances of that happening are fairly remote.

Most life-style businesses have built in limits to scale, most start-ups consider not scaling up and out a failure of sorts. As soon as compound growth is involved you're out of lifestyle business levels.

A typical life-style business is < 5 people, is in business-to-business, has a limited number of customers and does not aim to change that.

A typical start-up is one that is started by < 5 people, aims to achieve significant growth and is basically never going to be satisfied with the amount of reach they've got.

Start-ups will take outside investors, life-style businesses will not.

[pyalot2]

That's one of several definitions of a startup, and it's not the only one, or even an accurate one.

- There are any number of companies that started without outside investors.

- There are any number of startups that take outside investment but never scale.

- There are lifestyle businesses that turned out to scale at some point or another.

- To interpret compounding only in terms of taking investment and throwing away your life is a very narrow minded point of view.

[jacquesm]

That's the HN general use of the word start-up as per PG's definition. I agree there are others but it helps if we all use the terms the same way.

See here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4556838

[pyalot2]

Sure, I don't disagree with Startup == Growth. I disagree that it means anything but (such as outside investment, winning the startup/facebook lottery, compounding, putting insane life crushing hours, etc.)

There's a reason PG formulated it thus simply. It would be odd if for instance in the case of Viaweb (a startup without outside funding) PG would disqualify himself from having done a startup, but then went on to define startups...

[paul_f]

If we're gonna go there, lifestyle businesses solve real customer needs, usually for other businesses. Startups collect lyrics for hip-hop music. :-)