Which is why having outside investors isn't right for everyone. Who needs whom more?
Yes, I was going say the same thing. I think investors want entrepreneurs to do a scale first. Easier to make big and fast bucks on something emotional than something rational.
Every business should be a "lifestyle business". If don't know what a non-lifestyle business is, but it sounds like something that's unsustainable, that doesn't make you happy and thus doomed to fail.
PG seems to have done pretty well with viaweb, even though it was a fairly brief part of his life.
In any case, though, I would take issue with the idea that 'profit first' is necessarily a 'lifestyle business'. That seems to be comparing apples and oranges.