Lifestyle, Inc. (2004) | Hacker News Reader

Lifestyle, Inc. (2004)

plope.com

50 pointscyraxjoe4 comments

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.

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.

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.

I run such a company (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.

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