[betterlabs]

I would love to hear PG's comment / viewpoint on this whole issue.

I have done 3 startups so far (1 VC funded, 2 bootstrapped) and I work very hard because I love it BUT I never ever work at the expense of the time with my kids and anyone saying you have to give up your life to find success in the startup world is just misleading in a big way. There are tons of examples of highly successful people across many industries who have made a fortune without giving up their lives. And its wise to look beyond such myths which are made to seem like the "norm" sometimes.

[akkartik]

PG's described startups as 'compressing working life into a few years' (http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

But Arrington and Zawinski aren't talking about founders and their startups. They're talking about working too hard on somebody else's startup. Totally different thing.

[betterlabs]

I was actually referring to PG's views on that issue that Arrington wrote about.

And the whole discussion definitely applies to founder and their startups too, imo. The issues are the same and so are the trade-offs. Would you give you your life for your startup but not for anyone else'?

[akkartik]

Ah, I assumed the three startups you mentioned were your own.

jwz talked about working hard and enriching others. That's not an issue if it's your own startup.

[vidarh]

It is an issue if there are VC's involved. One of the startups I co-founded and owned 25% on at outset ended up with a whopping 1% of the proceeds of the exit. I'm not bitter - in this case the exit recovered maybe 30% of the cash the VC's injected, after about 8 years - and so the dilution was understandable. But unless you bootstrap, you will increasingly be working to also enrich others, after VC's, options to other employees etc..

Exceedingly few VC-funded businesses end up with founders holding on to massive stakes all the way through to an acquisition or IPO. That is the tradeoff you make whenever you take VC money: You hope you accelerate your growth enough to more than offset the piece you give away. That is also why it is often more financially attractive for regular employees to join a VC funded startup: the growth rates are often similarly faster (but you often fail faster too, and more spectacularly; though failing faster is not necessarily a bad thing if you're first going to fail)

[betterlabs]

They were my own :-)

[mountaineer]

I'm sure any investor, including PG, would prefer entrepreneurs to work smarter though, it's not just about hours, but it may take that to succeed.

But, after reading this, I remembered this PG essay from a few years ago.

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four." - http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Also: http://paulgraham.com/really.html

[betterlabs]

Yep, I remember that line.

But I believe it doesn't speak about "giving up your life" to do the startup. There is a big difference, I feel, between "low intensity work" and "working hard and smart" and "working hard and smart and giving up everything else".

And that "giving up your life" has to be explained with examples: cancel your long due family vacation because the a sales VP wants you to go to a customer site without having a solid reason, camp at a customer location in the carribean until you get a PO because thet want you to make it happen (though you know camping there is going to do nothing). Postpone a surgery because your travel schedule doesn't allow it. A lot of these can be clearly unreasonable which is why it sucks to do a blanket statement.

And investors and business owners like smart work but I believe they eventually like hard work also - they just don't want you to work smart and not work more because you worked smart. They want you to work smart and work even more for the time you saved by working smart. I DO NOT want to generalize this but as people building businesses we are all (including myself) are too focused on growing and more of everything. And sometimes we and everyone with us loose a lot of what won't come back - youth, family time and more. I have been guilty of this myself as a founder and I remind myself to refrain from this as much as I can.

Eventually its a personal decision though. Do what you think is right for yourself and learn from your "own" experiences.