Ask HN: Founders, how much time do you spend on your startup per week?

[pstrazzulla]

I had a conversation with a friend who said they worked 12 hrs/week on their company when they were raising money, he was too depressed dealing with a lot of rejection to do more than that. Three years later got an offer to sell the company for $250 mm, which he turned down. He was a lot more productive after he finished the fundraising :)

I find myself in the office working on my bootstrapped internet business around 45 hours per week, putting in another 1-2 hrs/day at home, a few hours on the weekends, all of which adds up to 8-12 hours of "deep work" per week given the emails/calls I have to do.

I'm curious how much time other founders dedicate to their startup, along with how much time they spend on "deep work" in the course of a week.

[jasonkester]

Most weeks (especially during climbing season or when travelling} I spend maybe 2 hours in total doing customer support and keeping things running. I can ramp that down to zero for a while if necessary, without much in the way of consequences.

That’s by design, since the entire goal operation was to maximise my free time.

When I’m building out a new feature (and when building the thing in the first place) I’ll sometimes push up closer to 20 hour weeks.

As one could imagine, I’ve never got behind this concept that building a product should involve 80 hour weeks and burning down your life until the day somewhere down the road when you “make it”. Life needs to happen while you’re living it, and happily I’ve found that one can build a profitable software business by launching early and building at a comfortable pace.

[highhedgehog]

Do you by chance need a business parter (aka me?)? Think about it! You could cut down the hours you spend in half, and at the same time earn a climbing partner!

It's a win-win for both of us!

[vinrob92]

Running ManyPixels, mostly doing Sales/Management/Culture/Hiring -- I divide my time in 2-3 blocks of 2 hours per day on each and leave a lot of time on weekend to think about the bigger picture. This could be considered as work.

I use my calendar a lot and every morning I start with 2 hours of sales and it built me a habit, and I become more efficient at doing it.

I would say on average 40 hours per week.

[pstrazzulla]

Thanks for sharing, I like the structure.

[sixQuarks]

I spend 30 minutes per week on my solo “lifestyle biz” (minutes, not hours). Built up a large target audience over 10 years working at most 20 hours per week. now I’m coasting, doing $500k profit/year. You don’t have to kill yourself to do well. I don’t know how to code either, it’s been mostly through content marketing and lead generation.

[pstrazzulla]

How did you build the audience?

What sort of biz is it?

[slap_shot]

60-70 hrs/week. Typical 9-5 with a few hours each night and some long stretches on Saturday/Sunday.

I'm all in favor of work/life balance, but, in my experience, an early stage founder simply can't give less. Markets move too quickly and there's too much to be done.

[amirathi]

I am a solo bootstrapped founder (like yourself) and RescueTime consistently shows 45 to 50 hours per week.

I strongly believe WHAT I do in those ~50 hours is much much more important than squeezing in another 10-20 hours per week.

[pstrazzulla]

Completely agree. You can work 80 hours and get less done than an efficient person doing 40.

[rcharpentier]

Somewhere between 30-60 hours per week on my startup, on top of my regular 9-5. I'm a solo founder/dev so working on the site takes up a lot of my time.