First of all, "lifestyle business" is a terrible name. I'd like to know who coined that term?
To my main point - With risk of getting downvoted. Why not think bigger? Building business is hard. Be it local publishing house or web based product serving millions of customers all across the globe. It requires same amount of (to quote Churchill) "blood, toil, tears and sweat". Then why not to swing for fences? In smaller markets chances of survival might be higher but survival doesn't equate to success.
Seriously? There's loads of reasons why not, and while I agree that it requires similar amounts of blood/toil/tears/sweat I'd say there's a bunch of differences.
[Background: 12+ years as an early employee in fence-swinging tech startups, also started and ran/run a modestly successful wedding photography business with my wife]
Our wedding photography business is definitely a "lifestyle business" by the usual HN definition. What a silly term and a silly set of ideas. For one thing, it's profitable. That makes is more profitable than the vast majority of startups. It gets old spending other people's money and I have to say that one of the things I found most informative and invigorating about the photo business was that it really re-reminded me the value of profit and the fundamental idea of being in business in the first place.
[It's also craaazy educational to be any kind of founder. Honestly, standing up the photography business might be the single most valuable thing I've done in my tech career]
Beyond that, our business (really my wife's business at this point.. I'm so busy with another startup that she does everything nowadays) makes a couple of dozen couples incredibly happy every year. I can't tell you how satisfying we find this. My wife shoots their weddings, becomes their friend, shoots photos of their children's first years.. It's a really incredible gift. The assumption that scaling up/out to serve a larger market would be such an obviously better idea is short-sighted and frankly kind of sad.
Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad that there are loads of people swinging for the fences and tackling huge problems that have huge markets. So many awesome things come out of that! But don't fall into the trap that ultimately leads to thinking that it's the only way to go.
And the best part is that you already realize how awesome your business is and why it makes more impact on the world than any of the hundreds of random social-photo-buying-contact-managing startups that come out of the Valley every 6 hours.
> Why not think bigger?
Because the happiness can be bigger. Also thinking bigger the chance of success go down, how many medium and small companies exist?
To my main point - With risk of getting downvoted. Why not think bigger? Building business is hard. Be it local publishing house or web based product serving millions of customers all across the globe. It requires same amount of (to quote Churchill) "blood, toil, tears and sweat". Then why not to swing for fences? In smaller markets chances of survival might be higher but survival doesn't equate to success.