Lifestyle vs VC Funded Business

I have a quick and timely update to my last blog post. I know what you’re thinking. Finally! A short post.

A few minutes after I published my year three article, I drove two and a half hours to Amsterdam to see what Appsterdam is all about. Each Wednesday, they hold two meetups – a lunch lecture and an evening meet and greet.

The lunch lecture yesterday was given by Mike, mayor and founder of Appsterdam, on the subject of funding. What a coincidence. The lecture focused mostly on how funding works and a lot of the terminology behind it, but also touched on why you might want or not want to get funding for your company.

Mike is a very good speaker and the lecture was quite enjoyable. Much more succinctly than I, he was able to explain the lesson that Alice and I learned while applying to startup accelerators:

A lifestyle business and a venture capital funded business are mutually exclusive.[1] Your business cannot be both.

Venn diagram of business types

I think we’ll stick to building Gus on the Go into a lifestyle business.

Have a nice day,
Yono


  1. A lifestyle business is one that is grown to provide its owners with a certain level of recurring income. A VC backed business is expected to grow at an unsustainable rate until a successful exit (acquisition or IPO). Most of the latter do not have successful exits.  ↩