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There's somewhere between a "lifestyle business" and a unicorn though. You can be a contractor with a focus on re-doing roofs and pull in $1m/year without too m
by chadash 4y ago
There's somewhere between a "lifestyle business" and a unicorn though. You can be a contractor with a focus on re-doing roofs and pull in $1m/year without too much work once you have things running. You will be wealthy, but you won't ever pull in $20m/year. I think it's fair to call that a "lifestyle business".
I know of a company near me that has $300M/year revenue (gross, not net) that sells cables and other equipment to ISPs in the region. It's owned by one person. I don't know their margins, but that person might be making $20M/year. They might be able to grow that business and sell it for $500M dollars if they play their cards right. I wouldn't call that a "lifestyle" or "small" business. It's somewhere in the middle.
I think it's the latter type that the article is referring to.
- xmaayy 4y agoI think what you just described is called "A Business"
- DoubleDerper 4y agoSeems more like a lucrative "job" than a "business"
- wbsss4412 4y agoHow do you define a “business” then?
- mc32 4y agoThese are the businesses all up and down I-880 on the bay side from Fremont to Oakland. They’re just businesses.
- rglullis 4y agoOh, come on. You are putting one third of the economy as "lifestyle businesses"? How many fast food franchises make less than that per year, are they "lifestyle businesses"? Seriously, please get out of the SV bubble.
- teucris 4y agoMy interpretation of the comment was that tons of business are just clumped into the “lifestyle” category just because they don’t aim to maximize valuation.
- rglullis 4y ago> are just clumped into the “lifestyle” By whom?
- quickthrower2 4y agoLifestyle business doesn't mean what you think it means. Supports a persons or family lifestyle (i.e. you need a place to live, food, essentials, and could be more than just that...), rather than being for investors to make equity growth.
- rglullis 4y agoThat definition is still horrible. Plenty of investors interested in buying equity in a franchise or retail shops. What that has to do with "lifestyle"?
- quickthrower2 4y ago"franchise or retail shops" is a pretty broad definition. Some of those shops will be lifestyle, and others could be investments.
- rglullis 4y agoNo. The definitions of these are clear. It's pretty easy to define what is a franchise and what is a retail shop. The problem is with this definition of "lifestyle business". What is the cutoff? What does it mean to "support a lifestyle?" If a company makes 10M/year and it is growing at a healthy pace without VC capital, is it "lifestyle"? If someone makes a living of investing in fast food franchises, each shop by itself taking 500k of initial investment and then returning $100k/year in profit, do you count each individual franchise as a "lifestyle" business or the whole thing as an "equity investment"? Like others said already (and maybe that is the point of TFA), this definition of "lifestyle business" seems to serve only as a way for VCs to downplay the significance and importance of so many businesses that exist in every sector.