Just find a niche and work at it progressively through life. No need to raise $100M D Rounds, no need to have an explosive exit, whatever.
I think it would be nice to just steadily have six figures, work on something I love and live life (a la Basecamp). Most of all: Have complete control of your destiny. No investors, no bosses, etc.
Here's a useful guideline to add to what you said: unless some person makes way more than the Basecamp founders (e.g. through some unicorn deal or whatever) and enjoys the same freedom to shape their product, then they have absolutely no leg to stand on to criticize their model much less to sneer.
I mean, some startup multi-millionaire/billionaire sneering at "lifestyle businesses" I can understand (though not agree with).
But some ramen eating wannabe sneering at them, it's inane, since the majority don't end up nowhere near as succesful.
It was about not liking broke "wannabe startup billionaires" sneering on people with lifestyle businesses as if they somehow "failed".
Sneering is a bad habit no matter your income level. Justifying it for the rich while dismissing it for people who are broke remains an expression of classism, no matter how much you try to clarify your intent.
It's not about money or class, it's about success in a particular field and judgement of that particular field.
/s
Also, I hate the term "lifestyle business" because:
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/i-love-lucy-...
Yes, "sure".
My argument was clear enough, and as the parent wrote "it's not about money or class, it's about success in a particular field and judgement of that particular field". What part of either seems difficult to parse?
Obviously money is relevant to my point in so much as it serves as the proof of that startup/unicorn success. The idea, and it's bizarro that I have to state it again, is rather that if you're to sneer at somebody for not "making it big" with their business, it only makes sense if you do it while yourself having a bigger business.
That's why I wrote millionaire/billionaire, not because I hold millionaires/billionaires in high esteem, or find it OK for them to look down on people.
I just find it more logical for a more succesful in business person to sneer at a less succesful in business regarding the latters business success, than the opposite.
Your inability to see that your point is about money and classism while using net worth as THE measure of success worth noting is both frustrating and all too common.
Whoosh. Yes, but not because they are rich, but because at least it makes logical sense to look down on someone regarding his business if you actually have a bigger business.
OTOH, it doesn't make sense to sneer on someone's business if you only have the idea/dellusion/etc. that you'll make it much bigger than them.
I know that Airbnb comes across as warm and fuzzy hosts who engage with guests, but it's progressively more commercialized with a good portion of hosts either managing multiple short-term rental properties or dedicating a space specifically for the purposes of consistently having short-term rentals.
I may be wrong, but I think it's the better bet for the long term.
Craigslist has 50 employees and minimal vetting of anything. It's great for what it is, but I would never use it to rent anything site unseen.
This is one reality show I would watch. Forget all those "We sleep in a dark place recording all the sounds buildings make and then speculate wildly about causes" shows. Sleeping overnight in a house/room/whatever rented randomly off Craigslist would be way more interesting and probably frequently more frightening.
A format like "Diner's, Drive'ins and Dives" would make sense with personal tours, instead of these 'virtual tours' found on VRBO (now owned by Expedia) and AirBnB.
Anything too dramatic won't scale, or it will be fake (like most 'reality' tv).
Edit: I guess one could do it surreptitiously, and save up the content, only to slowly release it ("maximizing revenue"). This might come across as "hit-piece journalism" funded by the AirBnB and VRBO. Change the cast of the show so they are not known associates of the show before the content is made public.
https://www.google.com/search?q=craigslist+erotic+services+l...
After Craigslist was forced to drop the Erotic Services listings, the volume of such postings didn't decrease at all—it just shifted back to being posted on random other sections, to the detriment of everyone.