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Comment by fearless | Hacker News Reader

This article is specifically for startup founders. Startups are very different from lifestyle businesses.

Er, no. Lifestyle business is one of the three positive outcomes fr a startup.

The widely accepted definition of a successful startup assumes rapid growth followed by a liquidity event.

Lifestyle business aka "living dead"/zombie company is one of the negative outcomes for a startup- maybe the most negative.

I would have thought the definition of a successful startup would be profitability on top of paying founders decent wages.

If there are external investors it is probably true that a liquidity event is the goal but if owner funded or bootstrapped I don't see anything particularly bad about a lifestyle business that is profitable enough to support a good lifestyle.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a profitable small business that can sustain its founders. I've done it, I think it's great.

I'm just saying that lifestyle business!=startup.

There's some confusion about the definition of a startup.

Nobody would argue that a sandwich shop that makes $200K a year is a startup, but some people would call a SaaS webapp making $200K a year with no plans for rapid growth a startup.

This article specifically applies to startups.

Personally I'd call both startups for the first 2-3 years of business.

I really fail to understand how that would be more negative than a drastic implosion, followed by complete bankruptcy. What's your thinking here?

I completely disagree with the Grandparent post overall but the advantage of major blowup is that you have a clear clean end and can try something else. If you get stuck in something you don't yet see as successful but it hasn't completely failed you might keep trying when the company can never achieve your aims.

With outside investors you may be contractually stuck in all sorts of ways too.

Doesn't it depend on what your aims are, and who are the most important stakeholders (i.e. whether investors are involved, etc)?

I'm still not seeing it. I think the definition posted there is self-assuming.

I agree, I specifically said "you get stuck in something you don't yet see as successful" so it only really applies when you are unhappy with the current outcome (which may be modestly profitable).

It was not meant as a definition but an example of a possible case where bankruptcy is beneficial.

I was just trying to express a situation where massive failure is worse than modest ongoing profitability (zombie company) as the great-grandparent comment suggested was always the case for start ups. If you look at my other posts in the original thread I disagree strongly with the great-grandparent about the definition of success but I can understand at least the possibility of circumstances when full blowup is better than drifting along.

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