Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

There's that term again, "lifestyle business." Uttered like a dirty word, when in fact Sahil has an actual product that many thousands of people use and pay for. I'm one of them.

Meanwhile, many startups aren’t true businesses – they book no revenue, and they may not even have a sellable product. That’s fine, because almost all businesses start with an idea or a dream or a need or pure desperation, and it’s up to the founders to make it work. They may even need investment, too – sometimes a lot of it. And that’s fine, too.

But when people from the startup world use the term “lifestyle business” to describe real businesses that aren’t pure tech, have solo founders, don’t take VC money, don’t intend to scale to a billion users, or whatever other qualities are not worthy of investor consideration, I find it condescending and misguided. Some startups could actually learn a thing or two from the vendor who sells hot dogs in the park, the person who starts up a specialist marketing agency, the partnership that builds a ceramics factory, or the solo founder running a media distribution and sales platform. They have products or services to sell. They have customers. They book revenue, pay their employees and suppliers, and if they do things right, may even become really successful.

In short, people who run small businesses are not hobbyists or dilettantes. They’re entrepreneurs doing real business selling something, often with limited capital and without the glamor or hype.

Kudos to Sahil for what he's accomplished. But for the love of Pete, please stop using the term "lifestyle business."

I feel like this is exactly what most companies should strive for. They'll make better decisions that way.

What I dislike is A) the view from startup land that there are only two types of new businesses, "startups" and everything else ("lifestyle") B) and the "everything else" category is somehow inferior or even some sort of hobby or vanity project. Sahil used the term to describe his own company, and at one point felt shame about it, even though he had a real business with real customers and real revenue.

That's how twisted the mindset in startup land has become, where real business owners are supposed to feel shame, and "success" is based on as-yet unfulfilled promises and raising a round?

I think it's funny, though, that non-tech industry leaders critiqued Bezos in the past for running a 'lifestyle business' when in fact Amazon was always a technology company and has become dominant and successful to boot.