Hacker News Reader

You don't have to follow SV stereotypes

The lean startup is alive in well in most entrepreneurial ventures. Starting a food truck? Grocery store? Custom t-shirts? Indie video game? Small focused SaaS?

The echo chamber is real. "I looked outside and saw no lean startups, its dead!"

View on HN

The article (and most of HN) refer to the local Silicon Valley jargon definiton of the word "startup": a company that is meant to grow extremely fast through the use of new technology. It's not a synonym for any entreprenurial venture.

What you're talking about is locally called a "lifestyle business" (not a "startup") -- a small business that can provide a comfortable living for the founder and a few employees, but which has essentially zero longer term growth prospects.

This point seems to be the source of much confusion in the comments here.

Those aren't "lean" either! "Lean" means starting your business before you have a product, marketing-driven development, and fumbling around chasing customers until you find something they want to buy, and then building it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lean_Startup

Reply on news.ycombinator.com