
Entreporn, The Fallacy That Wastes Your Life - jv22222
http://justinvincent.com/page/1392/entreporn-the-fallacy-that-wastes-your-life
======
pg
"If every developer was to focus on the very achievable goal of building a
lifestyle/micro business – the entire house of cards would crumble."

If that happened, the whole world would crumble, because we wouldn't have any
technology bigger than could be built by lifestyle businesses. Anyone who
wanted to build a lifestyle business on the Internet, for example, would find
that there was no Internet. You wouldn't have servers or routers or clients or
backbones or local cable.

~~~
A1kmm
Except that instead of a big business doing those things, there could be a
network of small businesses.

Each business does a small part of the whole, buying and selling what they
need from other businesses.

The reason these networks don't come into existence is the problem of how an
interdependent network gets bootstrapped. For example, suppose that gadgets
are currently made by a large corporation, Acme, because making a gadget
requires designing and making a widget, a vidget, and an xidget, a design for
how to put the bits together, and the final assembly, and that is too much for
a lifestyle business, and Acme doesn't buy or sell the parts as the whole
process is vertically integrated. If there were widgets, vidgets, and xidgets
on the market, and designs for building gadgets from them on the market, then
there could be lifestyle business building gadgets - and likewise for any
other part of the supply chain being removed. However, without any lifestyle
gadget makers, there will be no demand for widgets (unless they are useful in
another industry).

Maybe there is a business model for helping to bring a network of
interdependent companies into existence simultaneously.

~~~
taphangum
It's unrealistic and will never happen.

The market, overtime, always comes back to its natural state. Which is,
'Survival of The Biggest'.

~~~
olalonde
"Survival of the fittest", you mean. There are plenty examples of big
companies that failed (or would have failed wasn't it for government
intervention).

~~~
taphangum
You're right. By biggest i mean profitability, reveneue, etc. Which is, for a
company, an indicator of their 'fitness'. I'm not talking about the loss
making whales that had to get bailed out and for whom we are all now paying
for..

~~~
wisty
No, you mean "growth of the fittest".

The big aren't successful because they are big, they are big because they are
successful.

Of course, you could argue that the incremental value of an added employee is
positive for successful companies.

But there's an opportunity cost, if employees in companies are not developing,
taking risks, and focused like they would be if they were working for
themselves.

------
al3x
I'm disappointed that this has gotten so many upvotes and positive comments.

There's a middle ground between web application "lifestyle businesses" (like
duping credulous customers into overpaying for a time-tracking tool styled
with this month's CSS trends) and trying to start the next Facebook.

There's nothing wrong with being a small software company. People have been
doing it for decades now. It's boring, but there's nothing wrong with it.
Don't expect anyone to celebrate you for doing it, though.

Our time on this earth is limited, and people's attention is even more
limited. No wonder that more time and attention is put towards trying to
execute on big ideas. Sometimes those ideas end up not working out, but we're
all better, I think, for someone having tried.

As pg points out, the ideas that led to the businesses that have formed the
infrastructure that enables web lifestyle businesses could not have,
themselves, been lifestyle businesses. Someone has to think big, take risks,
and deploy significant capital in the interest of a dramatically better world.
If you don't want to be that person, great, but don't tell the risk-takers
that they're "wasting their lives". Would you say the same to scientists who
take big risks? Artists?

The media packaging of technology entrepreneurship is undeniably offputting.
But that's no excuse for dim commentary like this.

~~~
credo
Microsoft was a bootstrapped company and at the time, I suspect that some
people derided it as a "lifestyle business". They didn't go chasing after VC
money and didn't use the zero-revenue customer acquisition model to grow. Are
you sure that Microsoft didn't impact the world.

I'm not sure which "lifestyle business" _duped_ customers into overpaying, but
it is absurd to equate the so-called lifestyle business to "duping credulous
customers into overpaying for a time-tracking tool styled with this month's
CSS trends". I can list far worse cases - corporate fraud and crimes - with
large companies

Ultimately, the "lifestyle business" is a silly vc-invented label. Running
after VC money is also a lifestyle. All businesses aim to impact lifestyles of
founders, employees and customers. The difference is that vc-funded business
also impact lifestyles of vcs. Bootstrapped companies don't impact vc
lifestyles (unless they compete with a VC-funded company :).

imo both lifestyles are equally valid, but it is absurd to describe one as a
lifestyle company and pretend that the other one (which risks other people's
money) is the true and only "risk-taker"

~~~
chc
He's attacking Amy Hoy, a vocal opponent[1] of the hype around startups whose
current business is a time-tracking app called Freckle. Freckle's main
attraction is that it has a pleasant user interface. I'm not sure how anyone
was duped. I guess it's supposed to be dishonest if you're getting people to
pay money for functionality they can get free elsewhere.

[1]: <http://unicornfree.com/2011/follow-the-money/>

~~~
ahoyhere
Yes. In the interest of preserving history, he wrote and later deleted a line
that went like:

"duping credulous customers into paying for [something something] time
tracking styled with the latest CSS design site trends"

I was not directly named, but if you ask me, it's pretty clear which app he's
talking about: my first, Freckle <http://letsfreckle.com> .

And yup, that's me! I dupe 1,000 paying customers every month! They're so
well-duped that they write love letters to our support account. I really can't
get over the fact that I've got them so well-fooled they actually believe my
software makes them happier and helps them run a better, more profitable
business.

For the record, though, we have lots of functionality you can't get elsewhere.
That's part of the magic of the dupe.

EDIT: Hey, look like that line about duping is back in Alex's comment. Either
I'm blind and didn't see it the last time (which I concede is possible)… or it
returned.

~~~
graceyang
Also seems childish of al3x to forget that out of amy hoy and thomas fuchs'
work came scriptaculous which has probably inspired startup founders wowed by
Ajax only less than Ruby on Rails itself. al3x probably leveraged that work
early on at Twitter itself.

If lifestyle businesses like 37signals and freckle are producing the kind of
tools like RoR and scriptaculous, more power to them!

------
DanielBMarkham
Awesome article.

I'd like to see this taken to the next level: some kind of diagnostic.

It's easy to point out the general case. What's difficult is taking the
general truth and turning it into stuff to do _right now_. Answer these
questions. If you answer this way, you are heading down the wrong path.

From what very little I've seen, this is something that everybody sees in
everybody else but never see in themselves. Perhaps this is because it's easy
to imagine somebody else having to "settle" for a business making shinier
widgets for 3 cents profit per unit while we all easily imagine ourselves as
being the person to "change X as we know it"

I have no idea why some of us are like this. I continue to struggle with it,
and I know better.

~~~
richcollins
Just start fixing things that you think are broken and charge for them.
Eventually it will add up to enough to pay the bills.

------
apike
I used to get frustrated by the mentality that Justin is speaking out against.
That said, those of us building "get rich slowly" businesses simply don't need
the support network that people making crazy bets need.

The huge risk, huge return world will always be exciting to watch and talk
about, and it will always be splashing around waste money, so it will always
get a disproportionate amount of attention.

------
Murkin
That simple ? 10K/month ?

Id love to hear how I can get one of those 10K/month businesses (outside of
consulting/programmer-for-hire).

People keep making it sound like it super easy to just get such a business
going. How about some examples ?

~~~
blhack
I'd love to know how I can get one of those consulting/programmer-for-hire
jobs for $10k/mo.

Do these things really exist? How do you find them?

~~~
modoc
Yes they really exist. Some niches pay more like 20k+/mo pretty easily.
Consulting at 150/hour isn't that hard. If you want specific advice learn an
eCommerce framework really really well or become a deployment specialist for
large clusters of JBoss/Weblogic/Websphere.

------
pavel_lishin
Wait, what?

> The absolute truth is that each and every one > of us can build a business
> that can support us. > ... > In truth, there is no reason to fail – other >
> than failing to learn from your mistakes.

Yes, _maybe_ we can - eventually. But while we're building it, we still need a
paycheck. Building a profitable business doesn't seem like the kind of thing
you can do in your spare time, unless you're willing to sacrifice absolutely
everything else in your life.

> But even better, once you have the knowledge that comes > along with
> building a succesful $10k/month business, you > also posses the exact same
> knowledge that it takes to > build a $100k/month business.

And then, why not a $1M/month business? And then $10M/month! Etc! Etc!

I'm pretty sure that a $100k/month business is an outlier, too, it's just
closer to the center of the bell curve than Facebook, but still pretty dang
far away from everyone else.

~~~
jv22222
Myself & Jason (techzing) are both building businesses on the side. Our
paycheck come from consultancy. We both lead very fulfilling lives as well as
building our side projects... :)

~~~
pavel_lishin
How many hours a week do you spend on your consulting gigs, how many on side
projects, and how many on your personal lives?

Not trying to pull a GOTCHA, SEE, YOUR NUMBERS DON'T ADD UP, genuinely
curious.

~~~
jv22222
Hopefully Jasons post can help to answer that:

<http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/bootstrapping-with-kids>

------
iuguy
Note: I can only speak for my industry (penetration testing and antimalware)
so YMMV

Last month at DC4420 (the London monthly DEF CON chapter meeting):

<dude from corporate security firm>: How many people do you have at
Mandalorian? <iuguy>: 6 <dude from corporate security firm>: Really? I always
thought you guys were bigger? So it's more of a lifestyle firm? <iuguy>: If by
lifestyle firm you mean a company that treats it's people well for doing a
good job - as well as they could do on their own - then yes. If you mean a
firm that's focused on doing a good job doing work we enjoy instead of chasing
cash and ticking boxes all day long, then yes.

Probably the most successful example of this I've seen in my industry are
these guys: <http://www.pentestpartners.co.uk/>

I think <http://www.fbtechies.co.uk/> was the first I knew of, but amongst us
there's quite a few and it seems as though we're growing. I think the
realisation of having a niche skillset combined with commercial ability makes
for a compelling enough value proposition for people to go it alone outside
the conventional areas.

We don't all need to be multibillionaires (although some do). For some of us
it's the choice between working on yet another PCI box ticking exercise, or
charming the pants off some cool experimental tech.

I would like to add though that the article really needs some data to back it
up. While there's plenty of anecdata from patio11, peldi and (to some extent
although I'm obviously not in the same league as those guys) me, a source of
actual information would really blow the doors off.

------
Lucadg
I agree. You have no idea how much I agree. My small online business never
made it to 10000 us a month, but I don't care. I am writing from a nice
Balinese house with a great tropical garden where I'm spending 2 months. And
then I'll spend a month in Sri Lanka. Then, maybe it will be China. I have
been living like this for the past 10 years, working online and enjoying life
as I never thought it was possible. So, go for your small business and be
free, it's really much easier than it seems. And it's so beautiful.

~~~
sr3d
I'm working toward this goal with my own startup. Thanks for the inspirational
comment!

~~~
Lucadg
Ok so make sure you build it mobile from the beginning. I mean delegate any
task which requires to be in a specific place or to be online at a specific
time. Or, worse, to be in a specific place at a specific time. It may seem
odd, but that's the key. If you want to be free to go anywhere anytime you
can't be supposed to be somewhere sometime. There are so many tasks down the
road waiting to get you stuck in some place. It may ne hard to do but you need
to give them away. Sorry if that sounds insane :) But it worked for me, so I
hope it works for you.

------
nphase
I started a lifestyle business. It did that, and very well. And then I became
bored.

If a lifestyle business works for you, then that's what you should strive
towards. Some would call me naive or childish, but if you're the type of
person who dreams about changing the world, don't sell yourself short. Don't
grow up, and don't give up.

Go for it.

------
Anjin
David Heinemeier Hansson had the exact same conversation with Jason Calacanis
and Jason just could not understand why DHH felt that building that kind of
business made sense..

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDGHxO6N3Ms>

------
vannevar
This exact point occurred to me as I was listening to Reid Hoffman define
'entrepreneurship' at SXSW the other day. His definition restricted the term
to 'industry-disruptive technology' and 'big ideas'. I thought it was a pretty
self-serving definition coming from an angel investor who _needs_ those kind
of giant hits to cover bad bets. It's also a lot easier to start what Mark
Cuban is calling the Ponzi-style investment process where every round at
successively higher valuations leaves the next group of suckers holding the
bag.

------
Alex3917
"The chances of building a Google, YouTube or Facebook and scaling to the
millions of users required to be “considered” for VC investment are
vanishingly small. We’re talking in the region of 0.0001%."

You don't need millions of users to be considered for VC investment. More like
10,000 users if the service is free, or 100 paying customers. And it's really
not that hard to do that, it just takes enough perseverance to make it through
the first few iterations.

~~~
jv22222
I'm not sure I agree with "Not that hard to get 10,000 free users?"

~~~
sabat
It's not that hard to get a fairly small volume of users (100-10,000) --
compared to getting a huge, YouTube-sized volume (millions of users). But it's
still hard to get any number at all. It takes work, persistence, luck, and
intelligence.

------
rythie
He ignores that most categories only have 3 or 4 major players and rest can't
get enough recognition to be profitable.

Also $10k/month is ok for one or two people, but what if someone gets sick or
leaves, a business is not very stable at that size.

Additionally he assumes people want to change the world for monetary reasons,
which I don't think is often the case, otherwise you'd manage a hedge fund or
something.

------
hasenj
$10k/mo sounds pretty sweet.

~~~
seanalltogether
And only requires making about $330 a day. This is the benchmark I'm shooting
for with mobile apps, and right now with just 2 apps I'm at about $130 a day.

~~~
rodh257
What are your apps?

~~~
seanalltogether
<http://www.10millionapps.com/lol-studio-ios/>

<http://www.10millionapps.com/space-gremlin-mac/>

------
lux
37signals have been advocating this for years.

~~~
nikcub
they also raised money in '06 from Bezos

their argument isn't that VC is evil, more that in a world where a lot of
entrepreneurs seem to be focused on the fundraising/grow-quick/big-swing path,
there are alternatives

the OP on the other hand is advocating something entirely different

------
ilcavero
"the chances of building a $10k/month webapp business is pretty high" is this
true? oh god, what am I doing with my life?.

~~~
jv22222
Yes it's high if you work at it for a year or two.

~~~
borism
_if you work at it for a year or two_

so this 10k/month figure is averaged from how many years?

~~~
jv22222
There's no average. It's just a target. You don't get $10/k a month overnight.
It's a figure that you work toward. Many people don't need that much to live.
It depends where you're at. If you need 5k/month to live then you can reach
your goal even faster. $10k/month seemed like a good goal for the article that
could support most people.

~~~
borism
_There's no average. It's just a target._

uh, okay. then you might want to update your blog before there are 1000s of
unemployed web developers building their lifestyle web apps for eternal target
of 10k/month.

~~~
gridspy
'Entrepreneurs' who can't think critically for themselves regarding their
potential are in for a rough ride.

------
MicahWedemeyer
Excellent article.

Embrace being a lifestyle business and ignore all the startup noise. Do your
best to serve your customers and grow your revenue. You'll never get famous,
but then again neither will 99.9% of the people who go the other route.

------
pclark
This post saddens me. Startups should aim larger, not smaller. That is, in
_my_ opinion.

The blog post (which I am interpreting as "every entrepreneur wants to raise
VC and swing for fences") is generally wrong, in my experience. For every "a
million dollars isn't cool, you know what is? a billion dollars" startup
founder, there is one that insists that Groupon is over valued, and startups
should monetize on day 1 and be in charge of their own destiny by retaining
all equity.

There is no right or wrong answer in terms of what your aspirations are. But
there is a _huge_ audience of startup founders that are building lifestyle
businesses, and killing it.

~~~
akkartik
What's it wrong about, that people don't respect lifestyle businesses? Hmm, I
wonder if that's the silicon valley reality distortion field.

The post says that most people don't consider lifestyle businesses, and they
should. And you're claiming that lifestyle businesses are in fact quite
common, and that you wish more people were searching for scalable businesses.
You agree with the post that a lifestyle business is a perfectly fine, viable
option. Am I getting all that right?

~~~
pclark
I read the post as implying that all entrepreneurs are chasing mega hits
whereas some may prefer, or be better suited towards, lifestyle businesses.

" ... to the advantage of almost every player in our industry that we
“believe” in chasing the next big thing. They need us to keep chasing it. In
the truest sense – the next big thing – is a carrot on a stick that keeps us
occupied and keeps them in business."

Whereas in my experience, lots (loads!) of entrepreneurs are chasing lifestyle
companies. You just don't see them as much because they need far less from the
ecosystem. I can think of tons of ~$10k/mo companies building iPhone apps,
wordpress plugins, b2b web apps, etc etc.

~~~
jv22222
I have a sneaking suspicion they are chasing after Angry Birds, or Zynga...
once again very different to a solid $10k/month b2b webapp.

------
acconrad
While I agree that you shouldn't knock lifestyle businesses, I feel that the
TechCrunch quote was taken a bit out of context. The "dipshit" companies looks
like its referring to the kind of apps that have no business model but ride on
the hopes and dreams of overeager VCs who swear this is the next Google.
Anyone who creates a company without a business model and hopes to sell to
Google for $25MM is a dipshit. But those aren't lifestyle businesses, so it
seems like that quote was a bit irrelevant.

------
SpencerCooley
Most startups need VC money because their ideas are obscure, stupid, and
market-less. There is nothing wrong with using your skills to build a simple
small business to fill a market need. Anyone who feels guilty for trying to
make money with their talent is a sheep and a fool.

------
nadam
I think there are already lots of software companies which aim not too high.
Last time I heard there were 150.000 apps in the AppStore. There are lots and
lots of indie game developers and casual game developers; a great chunk of
them don't have the income to avoid their day jobs because they are not even
ramen profitable. There are thousands of cheap shareware software on
download.com. And lots of websites trying to generate money using adsense.

I agree that it may be a bad decision to aim too high, but there is also a
possibility to aim too low: into markets where there is not much money or
there is free stuff as competition. I've first made the 'aim too high' and
then as a compensation I also made the 'aim too low' mistakes. Now I finally
aim in-between.

------
swampplanet
The only problem here is that entrepreneurs are humans and as such they tend
to swing for the fences. I know I do. Its the come big or go home mentality.
Its the American way. Whatever you want to call it, its in our genes to do it
that way.

Yeah we could all become the equivalent of craftsmen who had to then organize
into guilds/unions to get a decent wage. Why do that when we can go home
millionaires with the right idea/right money.

~~~
jv22222
If you build a small business you can build a large business. All the same
principles are at stake. However, in theory it's easier to build a small
business first time round (baby steps). You can swing for the fences on biz 2.

~~~
swampplanet
Yeah I hear you but the steps you take in building a small business, while
perhaps less risky, are the same. Yet you even get cache in trying a big
business. I've done 5 startups (2 successful and 3 not) but I can point to
that in my next you can't use your small business as an example you can do a
big one.

So at a certain point in your life it makes sense to swing for the fences if
you are the only bread winner for your family I definitely understand reducing
risk.

------
starpilot
Wow, this is exactly what I was saying with a recent comment of mine
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2330900>). There's a wide continuum of
successes in the startup world. VC's are interested in the funding the top
end, but many devs would probably be satisfied by a much wider swath, that
could include wholly bootstrapped operations.

------
mraybman
I think this article is just an original argument for bootstrapping. I don't
think this guy is saying: "don't reach for the stars" - at least that's not
how I interpret it. He's saying: "set achievable goals, lean how to execute,
then you might just build a big ship organically."

------
sreitshamer
Arguing about the term "lifestyle business" is itself distracting.

To me the point is that nowadays you don't have to get permission (in the form
of someone else investing in your company) to get started. On your own you can
fairly quickly build a business that pays your bills (your "lifestyle") and
lets you escape "wage slavery". Once you do this, you have a lot of security
and a lot of power/control over your next move.

I didn't think the point was to build a business that makes enough to pay the
bills and then stop building. I'm certainly not stopping.

------
6ren
DHH's "How to make money online" (Startup School)
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY> goes into more detail on this.

The version with slides isn't working right now
[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/981-the-secret-to-making-
mone...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/981-the-secret-to-making-money-online)

------
kennethologist
I'm in a 3rd world country so $10K a month is more than enough for me to more
things. Like 1. Start a foodstore, business; petrol stations (Startup cost
around $50K), a popular restaurant etc. So this is what I'm doing now; trying
to create a lifestyle business.

------
va_coder
I want to believe this story, but the reality is that the big companies have
economies of scale that are very difficult to compete with and they often win.

~~~
jv22222
The agility of small companies makes it ridiculously easy to compete with
large companies.

Large companies have huge amounts of unsatisfied customers that are easy to
research, find and sell to- who are more then happy to pay for a direct line
to the software maker.

Large companies don't even care if you do this, because unless you hit $100m
revenue you're about as significant as a gnat on their butt.

~~~
va_coder
Honda, Trek, Dell, Proctor & Gamble, Exxon, Whole Foods: There are companies I
give my money to and most people spend money like I do.

------
teyc
Congrats JV. I've been listening to you on TechZing. You've hit this one out
of the ballpark.

~~~
jv22222
Thanks very much :)

------
ahoyhere
This article is not sensational. It does not tell you what you should do with
your life. It does not say VCs are evil. It doesn't say funded companies are a
waste of time.

The "if every developer" line is clearly just as much grandstanding as PG
makes when he compares hackers taking a job to caging a lion. To take this
line in this essay literally -- and be offended -- but not to take PG's line
about lions literally is to be intellectually dishonest.

Here's what this essay actually says:

* there's a monetary reason that we're all soaking in VC/fund/"liquidity event" news

* there's a psychological reason that we seek out VC/fund/"liquidity event" news

* reading about this stuff isn't even the remotely same vein as working on it, or making real money

* the author is angry that he believes people are being pushed towards lives/businesses that don't make them happy

* every developer is capable of making a product for an independent income

* and everybody might be happier if they did

Gee, not so controversial, is it?

All the hullaballoo about this article can be only one thing: overly
identifying with your life/business choices and attacking anyone who dares
call them into question. In a general sense. Not in a PERSONAL attack, for
example labeling someone's work "a lifestyle business" or "like duping
credulous customers into overpaying for a time-tracking tool styled with this
month's CSS trends".

The only reason anyone even paid attention to this article at all is because
98% of what everyone hears, all the time, is pro-big startup, pro-VC, pro-
liquidity event, pro- this and pro- that.

There is so rarely a dissenting voice that the moment there is one, however
mild, everybody is in attack mode.

In short...

Look, dominant paradigm: You need to chillax.

~~~
KirinDave
> The only reason anyone even paid attention to this article at all is because
> 98% of what everyone hears, all the time, is pro-big startup, pro-VC, pro-
> liquidity event, pro- this and pro- that.

Perhaps because you're so far out in the (physical) hinterlands of software,
you hear a time-delayed different message. Living close to the epicenter of
the startup world, I hear very few people really talk about flip-based
startups anymore, and the general consensus is to be wary of VC and take it as
late as you need it. Indeed, if I had to describe a "pro-" that has infected
Valley culture right now, I would call it the "pro-lean startup" fetishism. It
gets a little tedious, but it's a far more reasonable sentiment than the pro-
flip culture that dominated the Valley back a few years ago.

Really, the difference between the idea put forth in this essay and a game-
changing techcrunch-courting startup is scope. I could work on a small
lifestyle product (and I have a few in mind that might be fun), but they're
not... game changers. I'd like to work on a product that really makes a
difference to a large number of customers. Very few independent products have
the resources or scope to achieve this.

Coming out of college, people think they have to work either for a big company
or a big idea. The truth put forth in this article is that you need not do
either, And That Is Okay. Indeed, there is a great deal of freedom that comes
with it.

> Look, dominant paradigm: You need to chillax.

"Dominant," you say? Hardly. "Glorified," perhaps. The vast majority of people
do what you do; sell small-scale contracts and services to small-scale
partners and customers. And that's fine and good and noble and grist for the
mill of global economics. But let's not kid ourselves, it is not an ambitious
path, and western culture glamorizes (unfulfilled) ambition.

------
michaelochurch
_"If you genuinely have the spirit of an entrepreneur inside of you, something
about No True Scotsman"._

This article, as much as any feature on Mark Zuckerberg, _is_ entreporn. Is it
possible to build a $10k-per-month web app? Sure. Easier than building the
next Facebook (which is a matter of mostly luck, a lottery)? Absolutely. Are
most people who try going to fail? Yes. Is it possible to get funding for a
lifestyle business? No, that doesn't exist. So you need to do it on your own
time, which limits your losses but makes your likelihood of success very low.
If nothing is lost but one's time, is trying a lifestyle business possibly a
great idea? Of course. But is making it sound easy to make $10k per month
entreporn? Yes.

Also, as for lifestyle businesses, there are good and bad scenarios. A good
lifestyle business provides reliable income at a decent rate (at least
$100/hour) and the ability to control how much money you make and how much
time you spend; if you want more money, you work harder. If you want a 3-month
vacation, you take it but make less money. That's what you want: the freedom
to decide how much you work and how much money you make. This is a great thing
to have, and if some idiot hipster thinks it makes you a loser that you didn't
cash out for billions, who cares? A bad ("walking dead") lifestyle business is
one that just turned out mediocre and ends up had-by-the-balls by one or two
clients who become, _de facto_ , very demanding bosses. Companies like this
exist: single-client consultancies that haven't gone out yet, but never got
enough headway above the mediocrity of client demands to take off and become
something.

~~~
jv22222
If the article made sound easy to make $10k/month that was an error on my
part. It is not easy, it's very hard. But no where near as hard as building a
successful business on VC investment. Don't forget, after you get the
investment you're only just starting out... 8 out of 10 VC funded projects
fail.

~~~
michaelochurch
I think one also needs to consider the success and failure profiles in each.
What do success and failure entail, and what are their implications for your
career? The attraction of the get-rich-or-die-quickly company is that, if it
doesn't make you rich enough never to have to work again, at least you can
walk away from it and hopefully spin your story positively enough to get
career credit, for your next job, for the time you spent there.

Taking VC and making $120k/year, which is low-average for a VC-funded firm's
CEO, and then failing after three years, doesn't entail much financial loss.
And unless the failure is catastrophic and obviously reflects badly on a
single founder, it's not a huge career hit. Sure, it's 3 years working very
hard for middling pay, but there are worse things in the world. Depending on
how one is able to bounce back from the failure, it may have been 3 years very
well spent.

As for lifestyle businesses, no VC is going to fund a lifestyle business; it's
just not what they do. And bank loans are out because they make onerous
personal-liability requirements, so scratch that. This leaves two options. (1)
Don't quit your day job. Risk is minimal, but I'd be shocked if more than 2%
of these also-employed "entrepreneurs" take off. (2) Quit your day job, and
put personal savings at risk. This is a lot riskier, financially, than
founding a VC startup if you have sufficient social connections to know
(before you start) that you'll be funded. That doesn't mean it's not worth
doing, and if you don't have those social connections you'll be eating savings
either way while you hunt for funding, but it does mean that it's costly.

~~~
jv22222
To get the "opportunity" to get VC funding usually requires 1+ years very hard
work with no money of any kind.

~~~
michaelochurch
That depends on your location and social connections. If you're in the Bay
Area and have social connections, you can get funded out of the gate. If
you're on the East Coast and just out of college, you're going to have to
prove yourself before you get funded and, yes, you're looking at at least a
year of unpaid hard work. It's all about contacts, and if you have none,
you've got an uphill battle-- _especially_ if you're not in the Valley.

Income-wise, a startup is generally a step down, but a tolerable one for most
people. If you're 22 and without VC contacts, you can work for next to nothing
for a year or two, make contacts by hanging out in the Valley, and start
pitching when you have a product. If you're 36 and have a family to feed, but
have VC connections, you can usually get early seed funding and pay yourself
$100k annual salary, which is low for someone with those kinds of contacts but
enough to live on.

When it is impossible is if you're 36 and have a family to feed, but _don't_
have VC contacts. You can't afford to take a year or two off to prove yourself
(which an outsider will have to do) but you don't have the contacts necessary
to step immediately into a $100k/year salary with just an idea.

------
ascendant
I sense a backlash growing. It seems like the only time people take you
seriously these days is if you're in your 20's, have a spiky-haired asian dude
as one of your founders and are launching a social/mobile/streaming video app
in a weekend. That's what they cover on TechCrunch but not what the vast
majority of us out there are doing.

Sidenote: I have nothing against asian dudes, spiky haired or not.

~~~
nir
The whole point of this type of model is that you make you $10k/mo by selling
something that people actually pay money for, which means you don't care what
TechCrunch/VCs are excited about. They're irrelevant for you.

$10k is your "fuck you money", provided you can rely on making it every month.
This might be easier said than done, though.

~~~
bhousel
$10k/month is nowhere close to being "fuck you money".

~~~
nir
Define FU money.

For me it's being able to support yourself and your family in a fairly
comfortable western middle class quality of life. The FU part is that, if
you're making this independently and reliably, you don't need to care about
the TechCrunch/etc bullshit the OP mentioned.

For another person it might mean living in a West Village townhouse and
sending your kids to private schools. For yet another it's owning a private
jet and the 49ers. In these cases you probably need more than $10k/mo.

------
zyfo
Regarding the chances to build something super-successful: It's more
interesting to hear about startups that fail. Seeing patterns emerging from
failure is way more useful than trying to pinpoint what Google and Facebook
founders have in common.

The problem I guess is that the failures mostly just fade away. A service
where upstarters commit to write about their journey, especially if it goes
bad, in exchange for helpful tips would be _very_ useful.

------
grails4life
I think Spolsky settled this dichotomy back in 2000:
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html>

------
solsenNet
happy st. patty's day! with a little Irish pessimism!

------
VMG
Meh. Conspiracy thinking.

------
r00fus
TL;DR - Work for your customers, avoid the boss/investor.

