[7Figures2Commas]

Here's some common sense: if you're the CEO of a startup, you should be focused on your own company. Period.

This might come off as overly harsh, but it's absolutely true: taking 45-plus minutes out of your day to engage in an "argumentative" call with "the brother of a friend" who has a "world-changing idea" is a waste of time. As is blogging about it.

Your job as CEO is not to advise other entrepreneurs or to preach the startup gospel; it's to steer your own ship.

[jaf12duke]

OP here.

In past startups I would have agreed with you. When I did my first startup, I worked on it exclusively. I skipped vacations. I skipped classes (I was in school at the time). I did practically nothing else.

I burned out.

The title of CEO doesn't define me as a person. I'm just a guy that started a company. I get stressed. I need help at times. I have things I like doing unrelated to my company.

Blogging is one of those things. I blog because I love writing. Writing startup stuff for the HN community gives me purpose to that writing. It's a sweet bonus that many of our users are on HN, but that's not actually my top motivation. It's just because I like doing it.

As for 45 minute phone calls to help a friend. I'll bet the karma gets paid back nicely. But even if not, I'm not sure I could I look myself in the mirror if I became so self-important that I lacked the time to be generous.

[7Figures2Commas]

You and others have read more into my comment than is there. I wrote, "If you're the CEO of a startup, you should be focused on your own company. Period." Maintaining an appropriate level of focus on your company does not require that you work 16 hours a day, neglecting your own health and personal relationships in the process. Burn out is a symptom of working too much. But working too much is usually the symptom of an inability to prioritize and filter.

In my experience, the difference between successful entrepreneurs who have a healthy balance between their personal and professional lives and those who don't is that the former prioritize and filter and the latter don't.

There are 24 hours in a day and each hour is precious. As the CEO of a young company, you probably have a significant amount that needs to get done each day, and you and your employees are counting on your ability to "get it done." If you're spending an hour on an "argumentative" phone call about startup philosophy with somebody who has an idea, you're trading an hour of time that can be used to benefit you or your company for an hour of time with a person who clearly prefers conflict to counsel. Let's talk about you, not your company, for a moment: in an hour, you could easily fit in a vigorous workout, take a power nap, enjoy a lunch with a friend or relative, or cook a meal for your significant other.

In reality, of course, the decision to give an hour to an individual who won't even reveal what he's working on sans NDA doesn't mean that you have an hour less work to do. It just means that you'll need to make it up, today or tomorrow, increasing the likelihood that you'll be "working late" and reducing the likelihood that you'll be able to fit in a vigorous workout, take a power nap, enjoy a lunch with a friend or relative, or cook a meal for your significant other. Activities that it should be noted benefit your overall well-being and are thus likely to have a positive impact on your performance as the leader of a company.

Obviously, I'm not saying "never take a phone call" or "don't be willing to provide advice." But as the CEO of a company with employees, you are important, and your time is valuable. Being unreasonably generous with it is not of benefit to your company, or you.

[scheff]

I found your post insightful and beneficial. Experienced much of it myself. Also, I've had similar arguments with other wannabe entrepreneurs at the start of their path. Hopefully the HN community can benefit from your experiences.

[nemesisj]

Wow I couldn't disagree more.

I have a rule that I'll never turn down a 30-45 minute catchup with someone who needs some advice, or wants a sounding board, or just wants to talk about something they're excited about. Life is about people, and has a funny way of turning things around so that those kinds of meetings grow into friendships, business connections, and sometimes of course - nothing at all.

Most people agree that mentor-mentee relationships benefit both parties equally well. I've definitely found this to be true. While these kinds of interactions may not be the same kind of dynamic as a long-term mentor relationship, spending a small chunk of time can also break you out of a rut or give you a new idea.

Don't discount the power of taking a few minutes out of your day to pay it forward.

[7Figures2Commas]

I'm not suggesting that there's no room for developing and maintaining relationships.

But when you're the CEO of a company with employees and/or investors, you need to prioritize and filter, and you need to recognize the important, worthwhile conversations from the unimportant, unproductive ones.

Spending an hour of your time arguing with a person who doesn't want your advice in the first place and won't even tell you what he's working on without an NDA clearly falls into the latter category.

[nemesisj]

The flaw with your thinking is you don't actually know what was important or worthwhile until after it happened, and it may take years for that to really play out. Some of the best employees and friends I've ever had came about through an unproductive hour or two, filled with argument. As much as we'd like to think we can judge interactions within a few minutes of them happening, we can't. The funny thing is, the same rule applies...to startups! When you try to compartmentalise and distill everything into a snap judgment you just end up making mistakes and missing opportunities.

[ulisesrmzroche]

You're not gonna bill me for reading your comments, are you?

[duncanmcdowell]

Spending an hour of your time in a discussion which helps you reaffirm and/or challenge your own beliefs can be incredibly valuable.

[startupstella]

Some of the most valuable insights/learnings have happened to me when I'm sharing advice with people. Often, I don't even realize I knew something until I've shared it.

Startups are also built on reciprocity- I'm only here because mentors took time away from their successful companies to help me. Now, I'm helping others.

[namenotrequired]

Funny - often, I don't realise I don't know something for sure until I share it and hear other people's perspective :)

[crazygringo]

No, a million times. If you're a human being, you should be focused on your life. Period.

That means appropriately dedicating time and effort to your company, if you have one, but not forgetting to live your life too, continuing to invest in your personal relationships, etc.

[smacktoward]

And as long as we're on the subject, these "sleeping" and "eating" things you keep doing aren't exactly driving shareholder value, either! Get back to work!

[ronilan]

That's the uncommon sense. The startup common sense is that the blog is on the domain 42floors.com and that people may link to the blog post. Nough said.

[aagha]

"Your job as CEO is not to advise other entrepreneurs..."

Wow. What a sad comment to read. Being a CEO means being a leader, and not just of those that work for you, but to serve as a leader and thus guide others that are trying to trek the same path you've taken (and might re-take).

[7Figures2Commas]

I am speaking from experience. I once co-founded a company, now-defunct, and while serving as president of the company, was a formal advisor to another company. I think I provided a lot of value to the other company, and I absolutely learned from the experience.

However, in retrospect, I concluded that serving as an advisor to another company while I was building a new company of my own was not a good decision. Did taking the time to advise another company have a material impact on the outcome for my company? I don't believe so, but I can never know either. And that's the thing: when you start a business, win or lose you should always put yourself in a position where you can look back and know that 100% of the hours you made available to your work life were dedicated to the right effort.

[simonw]

Absolutely disagree. Startups are a pay-it-forward economy: people help you out with advice for free, but in turn you are expected to help others out for free.

Plus, teaching others is one of the best ways to learn things for yourself.

[ffn]

But your job as a person is to not be an asshole to your friends. And one's job as a person is far more important as one's job as a CEO.

[namenotrequired]

I was under the impression 42floors use their blog as a way to come to the attention to their target audience.

[benologist]

42floors and others target HN because it's easy to pretend this is the target audience for virtually anything and watch those pageviews roll in.

There's a very simple way to tell if HN is really your target audience ... is writing startup bla bla that has nothing to do with your company the only way to get your company on the front page?

[namenotrequired]

42floors are in the business of office spaces in startup hubs. To me HN, with its largely startup-minded audience, seems to be a great place for them to advertise.

[benologist]

It would be very difficult to for any service to have no audience on HN, not because HN is relevant to whatever they're peddling but because HN has a large audience.

Startups pooping out startup-fluff advertisement-articles chasing that precious 0.x% clickthrough rates to their homepage is boring and a stupid 'plan b' for growing your business.

Companies that actually have relevance to this community have no problem getting traction here based on what they do - that's why we don't get spoonfed "how to be an entrepreuner!!!!!!" each week from Github, Dropbox, Parse, Amazon etc.

[namenotrequired]

Those companies are relevant to almost all of us because they're (at least partly) B2C. 42floors is B2B, they rely on lower quantities of customers that each pay more.

In other words, it's not that the majority of us are in the target audience of 42floors. But a large portion of the people they do want to target - people that want to or are starting a startup - do happen to be here. It's like precision vs. recall. That's why I believe HN is especially interesting to 42floors.

[benologist]

I don't think that's accurate at all. Startups are just a small subset of companies that require office space. On top of that startups looking for office space are an even smaller subset, and those who have founders or employees lurking on HN an additional step down the funnel. People who "want" to start a startup are even further removed from requiring office space. This is rounding error stuff.

The reason the companies I mentioned have actual and natural 'hn marketshare' isn't because they're b2c vs b2b (which is incorrect anyway), it's because they actually do provide tools, services, platforms etc that HN users in enormous numbers need/want/use.

[galenward]

Those who subscribe to the "startup CEOs shouldn't debate with or mentor others" mantra will miss out on working with some of the greatest CEOs in the world.

[panabee]

sometimes the easiest way to see your own flaws is to not look in the mirror, but to look at others. this also applies to companies.

[pitt1980]

CEOs don't get 45 descretionary minutes?

[thejteam]

Its one thing to spend 45 minutes on something, its another thing to use a blog hosted on an official company website to talk about it. Company blogs should be used for company business; personal blogs hosted on separate websites should be used for personal business.

Potential customers could be reading company blogs. I would be concerned if the CEO was spending time ruminating about startup philosophy on those blogs to potential customers.

[simonw]

42floors is a marketplace for office space - so startups are an important demographic among its customers.

[7Figures2Commas]

When you choose to be the CEO of a company and you hire employees, you're no longer just working for yourself. How a CEO spends his time means everything to the company and its employees.

I don't know how you would you feel if you worked at the OP's startup, but I would have a problem with the notion that the person ultimately responsible for making payroll found it worthwhile and enjoyable to spend 45-plus minutes defending his views on startups and arguing with a person who wanted him to sign an NDA about an unrelated business idea.

It's not the 45-plus minutes, it's how he chose to spend them.

[startupstella]

This is a very narrow view of mentorship. Mentorship is incredibly selfish: often the person doing the mentoring gets more out of the conversation than the mentee...case in point. Here, the author was challenged on basic ideas that led him to think more broadly about what he assumed was obvious. This could and often does lead to more creative thinking and applications in his company. As long as he doesn't do this all the time, I think it's silly to assume that a CEO should spend 24/7 working on a company. In fact, it's degenerative, unhealthy, and produces poor results for companies (as many studies show).

[neovi]

Personally, I think there should be more focus on when he did it rather than the fact he did it. If he was at the office doing this, then I'd agree with you. If the workday was done, then I can see an hour of his personal time being fine.

[ulisesrmzroche]

You don't practice what you preach, dude. How is this helping you make payroll?

[7Figures2Commas]

I don't have payroll to make, dude.

[icebraining]

Do you also object to parents reading Hacker News? What about doctors or nurses?