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Poll: Are you looking for an exit, or building a lifestyle business?

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41–50 of 56 posts

Re: Poll: Are you looking for an exit, or building a lifestyle business?

#41
We created a superior wireless audio technology! Superior to BlueTooth Audio and Apple's Airplay, as it works across infinite distances & on varied VERY FAST ip networks.

Here's a demo of our tech http://SpeakerBlast.com.

We are actively looking for help and or an exit(we own IP on this).

Re: Poll: Are you looking for an exit, or building a lifestyle business?

#44

I hate that term "lifestyle business". It sounds like I'm running a website selling yarn in order to fund a knitting hobby.

How is that any different than running a website selling a program in order to fund your programming hobby?

Re: Poll: Are you looking for an exit, or building a lifestyle business?

#45
I'm really glad you have a third option there. Don't get me wrong, I love money and the things and experiences it can buy. But when I die, I want my life to have been about more than collecting the most toys. I want to create useful, beautiful things that improve the here and now for as many people as possible. A stretch goal would be for some of that work to outlive me.

To me hacking and startups are a lot like music. I got into music because I liked listening and wanted to make my own. I went to music school because I wanted to be a better musician. The idea of making money was only a means to continue making music. The thing is, if you get very good at making music that enough people want to hear, opportunities to make money doing it will find you.

The same is proving true with software. After some startup failures that involved putting the cart in front of the horse, I decided to just concentrate on writing good code and solving difficult problems that interest me. Instead of looking for capital, I've hunkered down in the middle of nowhere so my own funds will stretch as far as possible. A great deal of my work right now is open source. And so two interesting things happened this past year. First, other people showed up to help work on it. And then miraculously and completely unsolicited, someone came along and offered to pay me damn good money to keep working on it. If a few more do the same, I'll form a company, call it a startup, and find a way to deliver the value of this software as a service.

Supposing it goes that direction, I wouldn't think of it as a lifestyle business, because I'd like to see it grow into something more than that. But I also wouldn't be thinking about an exit, because it's not at all clear if and when that would be a feasible or desirable outcome. Lifestyle and big exits are both just side-effects of making something that's valuable enough to other people that they'll part with hard earned money for it. That's the only goal that should matter to a startup.

Re: Poll: Are you looking for an exit, or building a lifestyle business?

#46
post #36
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> getting paid for doing very little (lifestyle biz) You couldn't be farther from my understanding of what a lifestyle business is. I understand a lifestyle business to be one that you plan on making part of your life for the long term. It is meant to provide enough income to live at a certain level (ie lifestyle), but not necessarily to become filthy rich, or result in an IPO, or some other exit point. What makes yo…

"Four Hour Work Week"

It's like every seminar and workshop about getting rich quick, write a book, run a seminar and get back to pay you for four hours a week about how to only work for four hours a week.

Now, his workout manual actually has lots of valuable data and insight and is excellent for applying the 80-20 rule as you can find workouts in there that take very little time and produce great results.

Re: Poll: Are you looking for an exit, or building a lifestyle business?

#48

We created a superior wireless audio technology! Superior to BlueTooth Audio and Apple's Airplay, as it works across infinite distances & on varied VERY FAST ip networks. Here's a demo of our tech http://SpeakerBlast.com . We are actively looking for help and or an exit(we own IP on this).

That's a bit of a stretch to say you created a better standard then Apple and all the others out there!

Re: Poll: Are you looking for an exit, or building a lifestyle business?

#49
post #12
post #6

Our business has been profitable from the start and is now a pretty comfortable lifestyle business, but I don't know as any of us want to still be running it 10-20 years from now, so an exit certainly wouldn't be out of the question.

Can you tell us what kind of biz is it ?

http://www.audiomack.com

I wrote most of the code for Audiomack. Free music hosting for artists. Predominantly hip-hop/rap because my cofounders have had other ventures aimed at that genre over the past decade or so, but audiomack accepts everyone. We'd particularly like to make inroads into electronic & dance music.

Started it in our spare time, launched Feb '12 and I went full-time in May '13.

edit: interview with my cofounders for anyone interested in the ideas behind audiomack http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S1Vb0PE7w4

Re: Poll: Are you looking for an exit, or building a lifestyle business?

#50

We created a superior wireless audio technology! Superior to BlueTooth Audio and Apple's Airplay, as it works across infinite distances & on varied VERY FAST ip networks. Here's a demo of our tech http://SpeakerBlast.com . We are actively looking for help and or an exit(we own IP on this).

That's a bit of a stretch to say you created a better standard then Apple and all the others out there!

Yeah I don't get the comparison!?

The app he links to just plays audio in sync on two or more smartphones!

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