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1000x YES on the "aim high stuff is nonsense." It's cargo-culting, pure and simple. Copying the way an accidental empire was built is as silly as building a str

1000x YES on the "aim high stuff is nonsense." It's cargo-culting, pure and simple. Copying the way an accidental empire was built is as silly as building a straw plane in the hopes that the real plane will come back. Or buying Aeron chairs and a foosball table. As Basho once wrote, "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." That said, can't agree with you on the statement that a lifestyle business is a business where the ambition has waned. Lots of people with "lifestyle" businesses are getting exactly what they wanted. Getting what you want is getting what you want, regardless of whether somebody on the outside deems your ambitions "good enough." HNers seem to treat "lifestyle business" like a slur, while lionizing people with unlikely lifestyle businesses (hi patio11). I'd like to see that cognitive dissonance resolved.

dasil003 16y ago
Careful there. I put "lifestyle" in quotes due to my own rejection of the prevailing VC-driven silicon valley disdain for lower-growth businesses. FWIW I also feel like HN is pretty well balanced on this issue as well (at least compared to SV at large). However ambition is ambition, let's not redefine the word as a means of affirmative action. I never made a value judgement that every business should have endless ambition, or that getting what you want from a business and being satisfied is bad; I merely stated that the moniker "lifestyle business" is defined more by the ambitions of those running the company than any inherent quality of the business.
- ahoyhere 16y ago
  Late to the party but, that word (ambition) doesn't mean what you think it means. It only means "a strong desire to do or achieve something" -- it doesn't pass judgment on how "big" that thing is. By your (faulty) definition... for you to want to own a world-class airline is ambitious. But for Richard Branson, it's a deal brokered over lunch. See the problem?
realitygrill 16y ago
That's kind of interesting, because I thought Feynman came up (maybe just popularized?) the cargo-cult idea. Yet he himself advised his sister to aim high in physics. Yet I agree with you, and somehow feel I'm making an improper comparison here. Why?

dasil003 16y ago

Careful there. I put "lifestyle" in quotes due to my own rejection of the prevailing VC-driven silicon valley disdain for lower-growth businesses. FWIW I also feel like HN is pretty well balanced on this issue as well (at least compared to SV at large). However ambition is ambition, let's not redefine the word as a means of affirmative action. I never made a value judgement that every business should have endless ambition, or that getting what you want from a business and being satisfied is bad; I merely stated that the moniker "lifestyle business" is defined more by the ambitions of those running the company than any inherent quality of the business.

ahoyhere 16y ago
Late to the party but, that word (ambition) doesn't mean what you think it means. It only means "a strong desire to do or achieve something" -- it doesn't pass judgment on how "big" that thing is. By your (faulty) definition... for you to want to own a world-class airline is ambitious. But for Richard Branson, it's a deal brokered over lunch. See the problem?

realitygrill 16y ago

That's kind of interesting, because I thought Feynman came up (maybe just popularized?) the cargo-cult idea. Yet he himself advised his sister to aim high in physics. Yet I agree with you, and somehow feel I'm making an improper comparison here. Why?