4 ms·
There's already a word for a lifestyle startup: a business.
by pg 15y ago
There's already a word for a lifestyle startup: a business.
- Hitchhiker 15y agolol .. "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" I think Balsamiq[1] provides an interesting exception to above article as well as many comments. Peldi's a guy with incredible vision. I would not be surprised in the least if he swings for the fences without VC. Institutional folk have tried courting this boutique " lifestyle " business without success. [1] - http://balsamiq.com http://balsamiq.com
- dpapathanasiou 15y agoA small business, which has other connotations (i.e., unlikely to turn into the next big thing).
- thibaut_barrere 15y agoI would even add: that you may not want to become the next big thing.
- dmk23 15y agoAny startup would benefit from thinking of itself as a business. In fact most startups that are not businesses do not have a very good prognosis, though quite a few still get acquired for technology or team.
- esk 15y agoPG, this is only tangentially related, but I've noticed you quite often use phrases like "starting a startup". Considering you're an excellent writer, I figured you must have a reason for employing redundancy. Is there a reason you don't say "starting a business" or "starting a company"?
- pg 15y agoBecause I'm writing specifically about how to start a startup and only incidentally about how to start a business. The redundancy is phonetic, not semantic.
- JoelSutherland 15y agoThe author says: "There is a stigma against running a lifestyle startup (business)" PG Says: "Please don't even use the word startup when describing what you do."
- pg 15y agoIn current usage, a startup means a new business that is designed to scale rapidly. (Most don't actually manage to, but they're at least intended to.) It would be inconvenient if people started using the word to describe new businesses generally, because then we'd need to invent a new word for the subset designed to scale rapidly.
- hristiank 15y agoPG I actually thought about my article heading a lot and went back and fort between lifestyle "startups, businesses and entrepreneurs" for the right word to describe my post. At the end I decided on startups since the other two words are further off what I intended to convey. But I definitely can see your point and how it can become confusing.
- kbutler 15y agoMerriam-Webster disagrees: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/startup http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/startup 1: the act or an instance of setting in operation or motion 2: a fledgling business enterprise Fledgling also lacks any connotation of scaling. Perhaps the VC/angel community has adopted "startup" to imply design for rapid scaling, but the broader community uses startup to mean "new business."
- 6ren 15y agoIs YC a startup? (My searches didn't reveal this question asked previously - though it must have been. IIRC, YC was more broadly as a company that makes companies, rather than a startup that makes startups.)