[janson0]

It is great that you emphasize that. Success (or at least progress) seems to come down to what the founders choose to spend their time doing and/or be distracted by.

It is really easy to let meetings distract you from building.

[ixmatus]

Early stage, more than just meetings distract you. Hiring developers so you can expand is distracting, fundraising and being in the loop with your CEO is distracting, family and friends are distracting, coffee with brilliant and experienced people is distracting.

There comes a time when you've done this startup thing more than once, as a founder, to realize that everything - even day-to-day operations - is a distraction from the core intention of building a product. What do you do about it? Get really good at time boxing, delegating, and prioritizing.

Programmers are typically not very good at handling multi-faceted schedules and being ruthless about that schedule.