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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean by lifestyle business?

"lifestyle business" is sometimes used as a derogatory term to describe setting up a corporation for a hobby that is not really meant to be profitable.

That's not what a lifestyle business is.

In VC circles, "lifestyle business" refers to a business that is profitable but has no plans for scaled up growth and instead basically exists to provide a job to its owner or founder that lets them live a lifestyle they like, including the job itself.

It is how I hear people using the term idk what to tell you

Generally I think lifestyle business means a business that is going to make the owners a comfortable living but not likely to make anyone filthy-rich.

In silicon valley/tech it's sometimes treated as a derogatory term.

In finance and VC-funded -startup worshipping circles it is derogatory, because it means you aren't trying to scale like a VC-funded-startup.

That space is often confused with “tech”, and obviously overlaps with it, but its not the same thing.

A business that lets employees have a healthy work-life balance.

Thanks, it’s a bit concerning that’s not considered the default

That's not the original meaning of a "lifestyle business" anyways, which is more like a business that makes enough (to its owners, nothing to do with the employees) for them to maintain their desired lifestyle, like maybe a few million in revenue or whatever, but can't / won't be scaled beyond that because their lifestyle is already well supported by the current business growth / volume / revenue so they have no interest on blitzscaling, taking VC money, and running the perpetual growth treadmill or because the business is already topped-up and won't support further scaling (its not always a choice)

Ah ok, in that case Superlogical doesn’t sound like a lifestyle business given the number of VCs involved

Yes, indeed, although i think in this case it was just signalling how not being "SF focused" might be seen as a lack of ambition or whatever in such VC contexts or something and thus the exaggerated comparison to it being a lifestyle business merely due to the location requirements on ny/la (nicer cities to live in, maybe, than SF, or whatever)

i think just michael is based on LA, so he prefers having the offices near his home (has kids, etc), and has enough FU money to not need to let the VC's dictate where the HQ's are located at.

I guess also they dont love the idea of managing people remotely for a small startup/first hires, although im sure for the right person they wouldn't really care (or usually this is how it goes on most small companies/startups)

I guess if you have nothing else to live for except your job, you'd be really psyched to keep dumping more hours into it...

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