Lifestyle Startups Stigma
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Lifestyle Startups Stigma
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Re: Lifestyle Startups Stigma
#2I agree with you. However sometimes it feels as if building a lifestyle business takes the same effort (in the beginning) as building a large business.
For example think about all the small web development companies with 3-6 people in their teams. That is a lifestyle business. On the other end think of Instagram, 10M users, 6 people. Or Weebly, millions of sites, 3-4 people. Or Craigslist hundreds of million in revenue, 30ish people.
Re: Lifestyle Startups Stigma
#3I think this stigma exists because on some level, sometimes, when things suck at your high growth crazy startup (even if its just a bad day or week) you think, "man I wish I ran a skate shop in Huntington Beach with an online store". And it stings to see other people doing that.
It's a lot harder to delay gratification and swing for the fences, not just intellectually harder but emotionally harder. Sometimes I feel like my friends doing lifestyle businesses just don't understand what I'm going through, and other times they give me really bad advice that would be great if I was building a company to operate like their's but doesn't do anything for me at scale.
My family business is a lifestyle business in finance, I worked there from age 14 - 20, and its a totally different animal from a startup. Because it isn't a startup, its a self-sustaining business. Was after 12 months. So it makes me think a lifestyle startup is a myth - these aren't startups, they're small businesses trying to dine out on the glory of the name "startup" without takin the risk. What do you think?
Re: Lifestyle Startups Stigma
#4I agree with you. However sometimes it feels as if building a lifestyle business takes the same effort (in the beginning) as building a large business. For example think about all the small web development companies with 3-6 people in their teams. That is a lifestyle business. On the other end think of Instagram, 10M users, 6 people. Or Weebly, millions of sites, 3-4 people. Or Craigslist hundreds of million in reven…
I totally agree with you, they take the same effort at the beginning. Because of that, I think a lot of people figure they might as well swing for the fences.
Re: Lifestyle Startups Stigma
#5So what I don’t get is the hate. I run a small crowdsourcing biz, (that was pretty risky to start btw, it ate both the founders life savings and more), and I’ve once or twice been told I don’t belong at various startup/hacker meet-ups. Or to "start a real company."
From my perspective the companies are the same size, the tech is the same, the risk to personal wealth is if anything greater, and heck sometimes the market is the exact same. Why I can’t talk about these problems with people just 'cause I didn’t take funding mystifies me.
Of course, not for long, as generally the people who make these comments are just rude, and not the kinds of people that I’m going to think too much about. Still in the moment it kinda stings.
Re: Lifestyle Startups Stigma
#6I think this stigma exists because on some level, sometimes, when things suck at your high growth crazy startup (even if its just a bad day or week) you think, "man I wish I ran a skate shop in Huntington Beach with an online store". And it stings to see other people doing that. It's a lot harder to delay gratification and swing for the fences, not just intellectually harder but emotionally harder. Sometimes I feel l…
Most startups are flights of fancy trying to dine out on the glory of the name "startup". Let's all get back to work trying to create real value for customers and enjoying our world, and not posture for social rank among friends and strangers.
Re: Lifestyle Startups Stigma
#7I wouldn't call it a stigma. I'd call it a general disinterest. It's the same kind of disinterest that follows bootstrapped businesses or any business that chooses to make money instead of burning it.
As the cofounder of a bootstrapped business myself, I'm no fan of the shadow we operate in, but I understand it. The story of a company that doesn't have the luxury of positive cash flow to fall back on when things get tough is fundamentally more risky, and therefore exciting. You get larger magnitude successes and a larger number of failures, which is far more dramatic. And narratives with more risk, more reward, and higher drama, are the kind of narratives human beings love.
Re: Lifestyle Startups Stigma
#8I wouldn't call it a stigma. I'd call it a general disinterest. It's the same kind of disinterest that follows bootstrapped businesses or any business that chooses to make money instead of burning it. As the cofounder of a bootstrapped business myself, I'm no fan of the shadow we operate in, but I understand it. The story of a company that doesn't have the luxury of positive cash flow to fall back on when things get…
"narratives with more risk, more reward, and higher drama, are the kind of narratives human beings love"
I love human beings.
Re: Lifestyle Startups Stigma
#9I agree with you. However sometimes it feels as if building a lifestyle business takes the same effort (in the beginning) as building a large business. For example think about all the small web development companies with 3-6 people in their teams. That is a lifestyle business. On the other end think of Instagram, 10M users, 6 people. Or Weebly, millions of sites, 3-4 people. Or Craigslist hundreds of million in reven…
I totally agree with you, they take the same effort at the beginning. Because of that, I think a lot of people figure they might as well swing for the fences.
I think the point is that it's fine to swing for the fences, just make sure you don't skip other 'lifestyle' opportunities in the mean time. You may never get your homerun pitch, nothing wrong with a base hit. You watch enough pitches go by, you end up striking out.
Re: Lifestyle Startups Stigma
#10I think this stigma exists because on some level, sometimes, when things suck at your high growth crazy startup (even if its just a bad day or week) you think, "man I wish I ran a skate shop in Huntington Beach with an online store". And it stings to see other people doing that. It's a lot harder to delay gratification and swing for the fences, not just intellectually harder but emotionally harder. Sometimes I feel l…
> these aren't startups, they're small businesses trying to
> dine out on the glory of the name "startup" without takin
> the risk
In a more VC-style startup, you're betting most everything up front. Pardon the gambling metaphor, but this allows you to play higher-stakes games, but this also means that when you lose, you lose your whole roll.
They're all businesses, the founders are all entrepreneurs. We're all in this together.