That's assuming "Winning" means "More money", but that's not everyone's goal in life. There is plenty of space for smaller companies that earn enough profits to let every employee live a good life, without chasing unicorns.

Correct, but if you're interested in that, you start a regular small business, and you take a loan from a bank for seed capital. Venture Capital will give you much more more money and ask less questions precisely because they expect you to go for world domination - and they expect corresponding returns.

You don't reach for VC if you just want a lifestyle business, much like you don't reach for mafia money just to pay down your mortgage earlier. You have to know who you're getting in bed with, and what their expectations are.

This is called a "lifestyle business", which some people get very annoyed about. And as mentioned you can't get VC for this model.

I think a lot of people get annoyed (probably including myself) because the term sort of implies that there's great work-life balance which definitely isn't the case with a lot of small businesses.

Actually, what I was referring to is just called "company" or "business", or at least used to be called that.

I understood "lifestyle business" to be a company that tries to be adoptable to the lifestyle of the founder/owner, but maybe I understood it wrong or it changed.