Hacker News Reader

Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Is there some reason that people keep making the case for creating a standard business that supports one or two people? These types of posts have been pretty consistent over the years: "Take control of your life with a small business" "You don't need to make a massive company to be happy" etc...

I never see articles that encourage: "Here's why you should dedicate your life to starting a company and try to dominate an industry." It's like these posts are fighting against a boogeyman that isn't there.

I think 99% of all small businesses are "lifestyle businesses" where the founders aren't trying to build a market dominating billion dollar company. So who are these articles target to?

Is it simply the amount of press that surrounds VC and hyperscale companies that these folks are rejecting? I don't think any VC or founder has ever claimed that the only way to be happy/make money/do good is by trying to create a massive market dominating company.

View on HN

Not even just the hyperscale folks, regularly on Hacker News I see posts about "side project" recommendations that are beyond belief in terms of marketing. To me a "side project" is something I can spend 1-2 hours on after work and maybe a little more on weekends. If I followed those posts I'd be doing 90% marketing/10% development and maybe I'll have an actual product in 10 years.

I'm honestly not sure what those authors are doing as a "main" job that they can dedicate such time to side projects, seems like some people like to conflate "bootstrapped startup" and "side project".

The best way to be able to dedicate that amount of time? Be single.

This. I was hanging on to a screen for 10 years while I was single. Then I met my wife and we now have a kid, I don't spend a single hour per day on learning the latest and greatest frameworks and stuff. Sometimes, I miss it. But maybe not really.

I remember in school hearing someone speak who worked at ILM. He said he didn't even have a computer at home. 10 years later for me it makes a lot more sense.

Transitioning from single to married, I still was able to put in a little night/weekend time on projects. After the kid, zero.

> learning the latest and greatest frameworks and stuff

You miss one framework, you worry you're getting left behind. Then it gets deprecated and you realise you just saved yourself a couple of months' worth of work. You miss a few more, then pick one up and realise it's exactly the same as one you used in university but with all the buzzwords renamed. And that's when you understand that nothing of value was lost.

Author here. Not sure if you are addressing this article in particular, but it was not my intention to describe "the one way", but rather to show how we do things and share it with the world.

Also IMHO sharing a way of doing things / a philosophy / an opinion doesn't always mean being against everything else. For example I prefer riding the mountain bike vs a road bike. Doesn't mean I'm against road cycling and the people doing it.

That said, to comment on what one of the siblings said, obviously these posts are being written with the intention of bringing more attention to what we're doing, also known as "marketing". I wouldn't however call it clickbait, as it is based on genuine thoughts and ideas and we've actually been doing it for real with a 20 people team for more than 5 years already.

it was not my intention to describe "the one way", but rather to show how we do things and share it with the world.

I think that's disingenuous. The title "Why A Lifestyle Business Beats a Startup" is clearly saying that a "lifestyle business" is better than a "startup." Further, many points in the article make it clear that you are directly comparing lifestyle to a startup and saying that a startup is inferior...

"...especially when compared to launching and building a startup."

"The reality is that in a startup you are not the boss."

"It is a misconception that the only way to make money is to launch and then grow a startup with the aim of selling it later"

etc...

There are a ton of the typical strawmen in there, and unfounded assertions around trying to build a massive company.

obviously these posts are being written with the intention of bringing more attention to what we're doing

Hey I totally get that it's content marketing, so congrats on being successful with this post - I have no beef with that at all. I am just wondering why is that the content? Bugfender isn't just for freelancers, so it's not like those are the de facto target demographics. Do you want more people to start lifestyle businesses for some reason?

> many points in the article make it clear that you are directly comparing lifestyle to a startup and saying that a startup is inferior

True. The whole point was to compare the two. And that one comes out better than the other is from my personal point of view. But again, just because I think mountain biking is better (for myself and other like minded people) doesn't mean it's the only way and road cycling is not acceptable and needs to be banned. But I guess we understand each other :-)

> I am just wondering why is that the content? Bugfender isn't just for freelancers

This post was actually originally created for another side project of mine (O4H) but we thought it also partially applies to one of our big audiences at Bugfender which are solo developers (freelancers), so we decided to cross post it.

However in general we share a lot of our work-life philosophy on our Mobile Jazz blog https://mobilejazz.com/blog/ and despite not addressing our target audience specifically, we've managed to create a lot of awareness for our company and brand and through that indirectly generated many interesting leads and people ended up working with us because of that.

Small businesses are usually the norm. But HackerNews, tech, the whole Bay Area is head-over-heels for the growth business, the make-it-rich-quick business, so the small lifestyle business concept is the outsider in this world.

I'd also argue that a small business is just a business where the goal is to provide goods or services to customers and work to employees, whereas a lifestyle business has a strong focus on creating and maintaining a good work-life balance for everyone. Which means in our case reinvesting the profit in our team's happiness.

Happiness: happiness being a very abstract word that I chose on purpose. Because it means different things for different people and it also changes over time.

the whole Bay Area is head-over-heels for the growth business

Right, that's it's uniquely identifying characteristic. Literally that's why people come to SV, do to that kind of business. It's self selection. If you come to the valley you are trying to build/join an insane rocket ship. I mean that's what VC and the last 30 years SV is all about.

so the small lifestyle business concept is the outsider in this world.

Ok, and? Is there some lack of knowledge that there are businesses that aren't hyperscale? I can't imagine.

Because Silicon Valley is so associated with tech, it's easy to forget there are tech businesses that aren't head-over-heels for the growth business. Similar to video games, you forget its possible to have a work/life balance because so many video game companies don't have it.

There are relatively few people who would leave their well paying corporate job with benefits and stability to found a startup with a small chance of being very rich, and even fewer who would leave to start a small company with next to zero chance of becoming rich

I feel like you're grouping dry cleaning businesses in with software businesses. In software, there's definitely a perception that the optimal path is to meet VCs, take a bunch of rounds of investment and become a hockey-stick unicorn. You don't see articles that encourage that because it's the status quo.

You don't see articles that encourage that because it's the status quo.

Its not though. It's the rarest of companies that even tries to get on the VC train. Most software companies are tiny and servicing only a handful of local companies with things like website design, hosting and SEO.

Go to any industry conference and you will see dozens if not hundreds of niche software services companies that only to some tiny thing for that industry.

> website design, hosting and SEO

That's not software. Also, getting those funded are almost impossible.

> Go to any industry conference

Go to the startup hubs and you'll see more.

Paul Graham, founder of ycombinator, wrote several very lengthy, very well thought out essays saying exactly that.

Also, ycombinator exists as an incubator specifically for companies that are trying to create a massive market dominating company.

The "boogeyman", as you put it, is at the very core of who and what ycombinator and hacker news are all about.

No way. All of his articles are about mechanics and lessons around starting and operating a startup. Nowhere does he advocate that it's better than doing a smaller business or that a startup is better.

I disagree: some of his essays have a _very clear_ bias towards advocating that doing a startup is a Great Thing.

> If you wanted to get rich, how would you do it? I think your best bet would be to start or join a startup.

( http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html )

He also argues in other essays that now [2001/3/now] is a great time to start a startup -- and since doing so is such an all-in proposition, it seems reasonable to infer that he is also arguing that it's better to start a startup _than some other option_.

> I never see articles that encourage: "Here's why you should dedicate your life to starting a company and try to dominate an industry." It's like these posts are fighting against a boogeyman that isn't there.

Really? Much (most?) stuff on HN is to do with "scaling" (ie. growing as fast as possible whether it makes sense for the business or not), rounds of venture capital, handling shares, all leading up to an "exit".

The fact that a profitable business with a dozen employees which is growing at a steady, sustainable rate is considered a "lifestyle business" at all is a symptom of this bizarre mindset.

> I never see articles that encourage: "Here's why you should dedicate your life to starting a company and try to dominate an industry."

Try to look for older articles. There is a reason so many people are replying to them, it's because they not only existed, but even used to claim that either a "lifestyle business" in IT was impossible or that nobody would want it.

This is awesome. I have noticed this type of logic with most content online. If a message is targeted towards a demographic consistently it probably means its not actually a problem and that the reverse message perhaps needs more representation. I suppose its just another result of the clickbait economy that makes low quality articles popular on the web?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com