I gave that a lot of thought lately. Not that I wanted to, but being a one-man bootstrapped startup kind of let to it.
And with all the stories coming out of Berlin's scene, and to a lesser degree Munich's, I came to the conclusion: "lifestyle businesses" businesses without external funding are hard. They are traditional small companies, the have to rely on positive cash flow, profitability and banks to keep running. Quite tough, especially if the founder and employees have to actually live from the profits.
Startups on the other hand, they life of VC money. As long as the founding team can sell their vision to VCs to get more VC money, they run just fine. So the founders can live the startup life with other people's money. Sounds more like lifestyle businesses to me.
And with all the stories coming out of Berlin's scene, and to a lesser degree Munich's, I came to the conclusion: "lifestyle businesses" businesses without external funding are hard. They are traditional small companies, the have to rely on positive cash flow, profitability and banks to keep running. Quite tough, especially if the founder and employees have to actually live from the profits.
Startups on the other hand, they life of VC money. As long as the founding team can sell their vision to VCs to get more VC money, they run just fine. So the founders can live the startup life with other people's money. Sounds more like lifestyle businesses to me.