Mom-and-pop, or lifestyle businesses are categorized as companies who's customer delivery model can't scale well and/or who's market can't sustain a venture return regardless of how it's capitally backed. Capital comes in many forms, and VC is just a small blip in the total amount of money deployed to help businesses grow.
There's a bunch, but one example would be Morningstar, the mutual fund review company. Other than some small friends and family money at the beginning ($80k), Joe Mansueto never raised any money, until seventeen years after the founding and it was making substantial money already.
This was in part by selling annual subscriptions, so he got cash in advance from each customer. Even though he lost money for a while by accounting rules, he was cash flow positive after a year.
