Micah, I certainly intended no slight to you nor anyone with similar interests. I wrote those words after discussions with several people, one in particular who I will not name, and those people who feared that the room would fill with people who were interested only in advancing their own agenda and thus fail to attract the people who are interested in selflessly contributing to advancing the Atlanta Startup Ecosystem.

What’s more Bill was right in that I was also trying hard to ensure everyone who planned to attend the event was actually happy they did attend the event. I was trying to describe with labels the people I envisioned would not be interested in a discussion of how to grow the startup ecosystem.

More specifically to your concern about my use of the term “lifestyle entrepreneur” I’ve struggled for years with the terms to describe those in the community who are true “startup” and community oriented people and those who only really care about growing their own business. I wanted people to attend who want to contribute to improving the ecosystem and are willing to give freely of themselves to help others in the “rising the tides to floats all boats” kind of way. Using the word “lifestyle entrepreneur” was my way of trying to define one type of entrepreneur who wasn’t interested in helping others.

So if I erred please take me to task for poor word choice but it’s my hope you can appreciate the complexity of concerns from multiple sources I was trying to address and not take me to task for bad intentions.

And I don’t think there is any desire to exclude “lifestyle entrepreneurs” from the conversation – more an attempt to save them from coming to a meeting that wouldn’t particularly interest them.

Frankly I would be terribly surprised if there are people that only want big VC-money ventures involved. I wouldn’t think that the hosts would fall into that category, but I’d like to know.

I totally agree with you and Alan re: lifestyle entrepreneurship/entrepreneur lifestyle, but this is really just a semantic quibble. Any of us would be considered indispensable participants at tonight’s event.

I have worked at some crazy “swing-for-the-fences” startups, and frankly they act like idiots a lot of the time. I have also done a lot of the slow-grow startups, and frankly they do much better. On top of that, the people involved in slow-grow are often much *better* at what they do than the “swingers” as they actually have time to learn to do things right rather than grow as fast as possible with no thoughts about sustainability of product, people, or profits.

My personal definition of a lifestyle entrepreneur is more of an “entrepreneur lifestyle”. I love starting and growing business, and will do that as a lifestyle. And I’m also highly involved in the startup scene, trying to connect everyone in Atlanta that is looking for an “entrepreneur lifestyle” as well. Why? Because it’s a social good, and because I need these folks to work with me! I’ve found in Atlanta so far the biggest limiting factor to success is quality people.

No action should be taken to exclude “slow growers” from the startup community.

Finally, if the OP actually means “people that scruff up just enough money to live on w/o having to work much” then fine, forget those guys.