Image credit: GigaOM
Some businesses are designed – maybe even destined – to be owner operated. Industry parlance often refers to these businesses as lifestyle businesses. Wikipedia has a nice definition. They are typically small, profitable, generate cash and enable their owner-operator to sustain a well-above average lifestyle. In some circumstances, they may even make their owner-operator filthy rich over time.
Some people may think that the term lifestyle business is an insult. I couldn’t disagree more. Being the owner-operator of a lifestyle business should be a source of pride; a badge of honor.
As a growth stage investor, I see quite a few lifestyle businesses in our deal log. This type of opportunity finds us because they often meet our high-level screening criteria. They have paying customers, generate meaningful revenue and produce EBITDA and cash every year. They “fit the profile”.
But when I meet with an entrepreneur who is running a lifestyle business, I’m not shy about asking a most important question. It usually goes something like this:
I understand you wish to raise capital to grow your business. But if I’m hearing you correctly, today you own and control nearly 100% of your company. This enables you to lead a balanced life, generate meaningful personal wealth and take great satisfaction from your work. Why would you want to screw all of that up by raising capital?
I mean it too. Raising capital comes with loss of control, changes in lifestyle (read work flexibility) and other issues. More importantly, lifestyle businesses tend to lack one key ingredient that institutional equity investors (particularly growth equity investors) need to generate returns; rapid scalability. Bringing in institutional capital creates an incredible amount of pressure to generate top-line growth. In the context of most lifestyle businesses, that kind of top-line growth is either not achievable or if it is, will so fundamentally alter the character of the business that it will be unrecognizable to the entrepreneur at the end of the process. In short, that pressure will probably do more damage than good from the owner-operators point of view.
So if you are an entrepreneur seeking capital from me and I say something like “You own a great lifestyle business; why on earth would you want to raise capital and screw it up?”, please know I’m coming from an honest place. I’m not insulting you. I am, however, trying to get you to come to grips with the fact that raising capital may be a surefire way to screw up the good thing you have going.
(Cross-posted @ Non-Linear Growth)
