3 ms·

I've been curious lately about lifestyle businesses - the kind of business designed not for growth, but for maintaining a comfortable life for its employees. 4

• msvan 11y ago
  Many tech markets are ruthlessly competitive and will be swallowed by the companies that are designed for growth. Code's biggest advantage is that it scales so well. Lifestyle businesses exist but still take hard work to pull off.
• sanowski 11y ago
  do these actually exist?
  • kornork 11y ago
    One that comes to mind is Basecamp.
• badsock 11y ago
  Anecdotal data point: I work at one. We've capped both the number of clients and the number of employees at around 12. I work 18 hours a week, so does the founder. The most anyone works is 35, but they're the exception, and the next "raise" they get will be the same amount of money but less hours. We've been a going concern for 4 years now, so there's still time for things to go off the rails; but for the moment we're killing our competition and there's essentially zero internal strife. To keep the caps we're starting to divide like a bacterium - fostering other companies around our model instead of growing ourselves. We'll see how that goes. It's a little alarming to realize that we're creating our own competition, but there's precedent for it going well (e.g. Anchor Brewing in San Francisco). It's a great way to make money, and I spend all the other productive hours of my week on my efforts to change the world. There's lots of blue-ocean ways to do that when the need to monetize takes a back seat.
  • cheez 11y ago
    Wow, what do you guys do? Edit: I'm trying something similar.
  • Qworg 11y ago
    I'd certainly love to learn more - can you provide some background/information about this?
  • bitserf 11y ago
    Do you mind sharing a hint of how you got started? I find the idea of working similar hours as you but still being able to provide for my family while spending a lot of time with them incredibly appealing. Whereas at the moment, during the week I'm lucky to get more than 2 hours a day, the commute and workday eating up the balance.
    • badsock 11y ago
      The founder got a marketing job, and was good enough at it that when he decided to move cities the company wanted to keep him on as a remote consultant. From there he added a couple more clients, and as the work increased and diversified he started to subcontract (including to me, for IT work). That kept going until it became clear (legally and otherwise) that all the consultants were in fact employees. So the transition for everyone from a group of consultants (who, as a perk of that role, can set their own hours) to a proper organization was seamless, and we were all able to solidify the hours that we wanted as it occurred.
• kukx 11y ago
  It may work until there comes a competitor like Amazon that operates on near 0 margins and kills the business. Still it's a nice vision.
• jtolmar 11y ago
  Even among tech companies designed for fast growth, I'd like to see more structured as worker owned co-ops instead of having investor ownership. Without investment money at the outset, they'll have to bootstrap longer, but that's only an issue if the business is following a "me-too" wave and has competitors on similar timescales. Once one gets off the ground I don't see a disadvantage.