Short answer: it depends on your personality and the type of startup. Long answer: My startup (founded in 2000, sold in 2014, still going strong) took a huge

Short answer: it depends on your personality and the type of startup. Long answer: My startup (founded in 2000, sold in 2014, still going strong) took a huge toll on my personal life, but it was a 24/7 operation (a website), I was both CEO and lead programmer/CTO and I'm terrible at delegating work and inspiring responsibility in people. Also, web technologies did tend to fall apart more easily back then and my experience with that was limited. In hindsight, all of these factors contributed to the (largely unnecessary) 100-hour-weeks I pulled in the first couple of years. So, brief advice: if your startup is a 24/7 operation (it doesn't have to be, there's plenty of other opportunities), you will likely be putting out fires around the clock. If you can, hire reliable people early on who can do this for you and put your mind at ease. You will be thinking about your startup a lot either way, but you can surely do that while enjoying your weekend trips or whatever.