I gave that a lot of thought lately. Not that I wanted to, but being a one-man bootstrapped startup kind of let to it.

And with all the stories coming out of Berlin's scene, and to a lesser degree Munich's, I came to the conclusion: "lifestyle businesses" businesses without external funding are hard. They are traditional small companies, the have to rely on positive cash flow, profitability and banks to keep running. Quite tough, especially if the founder and employees have to actually live from the profits.

Startups on the other hand, they life of VC money. As long as the founding team can sell their vision to VCs to get more VC money, they run just fine. So the founders can live the startup life with other people's money. Sounds more like lifestyle businesses to me.

The thing that annoys me about "lifestyle business" is that it also suggests this idea of short days, tons of vacation, etc. Which is usually not the case.

Honestly I think it’s a way for those that owe million to VCs to feel like they have one over us businesses that grew at a healthy pace, have money in the bank, and money in the bank goes up not down every month.

At least that is how lifestyle business is slung here. No one in my local business association would scoff at businesses growing at a healthy pace and no debt. Also nice if no VC gives me another round, I don’t have to shut down tomorrow.

Yes. However it can also be pitched as there's no big upside and the salary is so-so but it's a "lifestyle business" even though the hours and other time-off are nothing to write home about.

I'm the CTO of a "lifestyle" business, though we don't really call ourselves that. Salaries here are excellent for our area (MN). Time-off is better than average, and we have free worldwide flights for vacations as a perk. Highly flexible work hours and location - we have some FTE's 100% remote, living in other states; I'm 90% remote. No overtime culture, no death marches. Maybe every 2-3 years we have a couple weeks of a good crunch but it's with buy-in from everyone doing the crunch.

We're lucky to have a customer base that spans many industries. We've lost some chunks of income.. chains of malls closing, restaurants, lobbies, DMV offices, customers getting live sports info.. but it's all temporary and we're well in the black. Instead of worrying if we'll make it we're looking for opportunities and how we can best take advantage of our strong position.

That sounds great. A lot of the time "lifestyle" businesses for the owners (in the sense of control, no outside investors, etc.) doesn't trickle down to the employees in any meaningful way though.

I feel the phase means something different entirely - let's say I start a software consultancy with my friends, and my goals are to run the firm how I want, be my own boss and that we have fun working on interesting projects together. That to me is a lifestyle business.

If there is a profitable decision I could take, like investment / partners / whatever, I prioritise the fact that I want to keep running this company myself without interference over profit. I prioritise my job satisfaction.

Maybe I could hire a more competent CEO, but that's not what I am trying to do here. I could get a mentor thou.

This business could be funded by debt, or investment, though not normally.

Now I might make a lot of money and grow the firm to 10k people, or I might take long holidays and go bankrupt - that's a different problem entirely.

> Pre-crisis startup funding was largely decadence enabled by cheap money.

Arguably with current rates we are going to have cheapest money ever possible. On top of that a lot of traditional investment vehicles are contracting.

It's a fair point but I think that the key issue is different. VC funds are a kind of equity investment; the question is whether they are actually delivering results. In the case of some of the top-notch US funds I would guess the answer is yes and will continue to be so.

On the other hand large funds like SoftBank are clearly under-performing. Cracks in that model were already appearing prior to Covid-19. So yes, interest rates are low, and equities should benefit in general. However it does not follow that VC investment funds are overall a good bet. To make that argument you would have to trade off against alternatives like real estate, more traditional industries, on-shoring of supply chains, etc.