

Lifestyle, Inc. (2004) - cyraxjoe
http://www.plope.com/Members/chrism/lifestyle_inc

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rconti
I have literally no idea what this means. At first I took "lifestyle company"
to mean "company that produces things for people's lifestyles", but his
description seemed to be more about one's work for the company being a part of
their lifestyle.

Regardless, I recoil and avoid like the plague any product or service targeted
at my "lifestyle" (typically with the word "luxury" thrown in for good
measure). It's a sure tell of a company looking to separate fools from their
money.

And therein lies the problem with the author's attempt to extract huge meaning
from a two-word term. Or perhaps he truly understood what the CEO meant, but
just utterly failed at articulating what he meant.

~~~
disillusioned
Erm, that's... no, not what they mean. A "lifestyle business" is a colloquial
term for a business that is built to stick around, not on an aggressive growth
trajectory, and which can provide a reasonable lifestyle for its proprietors,
but not a meteoric rise, "fuck-you-money-providing" exit event. It's a
business that's a going concern: a company that is profitable, healthy, and
well-rounded, but not spectacular, and not a startup that is burning investor
capital on the way to their hopeful exit.

I think you might have gotten caught up on the phrase and extrapolated quite a
bit of meaning from that which isn't there. It's a pretty common phrase, and
it has nothing to do with luxury goods or providing "lifestyle" products to
people.

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visakanv
Cool that this was written in 2004. Also reminds me of what David Ogilvy said
about running his company- he'd only seek out clients that he personally
wanted to help, only wrote copy for clients whose products he actually used
and believed in, and he experienced joy and a thrill doing what he did.

I'd love to hear/read about other such companies and founders. I imagine
Buffer might be a real-world modern example.

~~~
akanet
I run such a company ([https://coderpad.io/](https://coderpad.io/)). One of
the things you start to realize very quickly is that the term "lifestyle
business" is often just a matter of convenience.

Put another way, a lifestyle business can be looked at as simply a good
business patiently looking for its opportunity to go big. Or, a lifestyle
business can be avowedly lifestyle. Businesses can change a lot over time.

It's also odd that you'd mention Buffer as being a candidate for a lifestyle
company. They've taken about $4m in funding, which implies that they convinced
all of their investors that they'd see a significant return on their money.
That's not to say that they can't operate like a lifestyle business, but they
are almost certainly looking to generate a very large return.

