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I don't understand why the idea that you should try and gain a competitive advantage by stretching yourself beyond limits is so popular in the startup community

I don't understand why the idea that you should try and gain a competitive advantage by stretching yourself beyond limits is so popular in the startup community. Not resting properly (be it vacation or daily sleep) hurts your productivity and decision making ability badly. So overworking is simply not a rational thing to do. Starting a new business is not a sprint, but a marathon. And all this romanticizing does a huge disservice to the people who buy the hype and end up burned out.

andraz 14y ago
Being constantly overworked is not sustainable. However start-up life does include periods of overwork to get things done. Things that you could put off for a couple of days if you had a regular job.
- rimantas 14y ago
  And what exactly would change in those couple of days?
  - andraz 14y ago
    From what I've seen - a lot. You can lose a leading client (or cause huge bump on the road), your marketing plan can fall apart. It's about finishing stuff today, so tomorrow you can do more important strategical stuff. Start-up contrary to some of beliefs is not one big effort to reach the summit. It's a series of small wins (and loses) that accumulate. And you need to be accumulating them faster than your money runs out or competition takes the space, etc.
  - matwood 14y ago
    A lot, and those things stack up over time. If I finish something today it frees up my mind to think about some other, possibly larger problem tomorrow. Do this enough times and it can be the difference between success and failure. I know people like to think in big black swan moments, but most of life is not like that. Life is about making lots of little decisions that add up over time. The speech from Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday talks about fighting for each inch on the football field and really how it is no different than life itself. Over time those inches add up.
j45 14y ago
Most folks this way is sold to haven't lived much and the marketing machine reaches them. There's no question its more work than anyone expects. I just believe there's a better way than perpetually stumbling a startup
_delirium 14y ago
I see this genre of writing as less about practical business advice and more about a certain kind of evangelism: leave your old ideas behind and join the new movement! It can be startups, or something else. The general template is an aspiration that a new life awaits you, if you dive in and commit to it, but only if you really treat it as a new life, not just a new job.
mindcrime 14y ago
Starting a new business is not a sprint, but a marathon. And all this romanticizing does a huge disservice to the people who buy the hype and end up burned out. Eh... I don't know. I mean, yeah, I totally agree with the sentiment that "Starting a new business is not a sprint, but a marathon." But, even so, part of the issue is the old saw that (paraphrased) says "an entrepreneur is someone who sets out to change something about the world when he doesn't control the resources necessary to do so." If you buy that definition then doing a startup is trying to do the (nearly) impossible. Given that, you look at the simply ridiculous amount of work in front of you, and the resources you have available, and you don't have much choice but to do as much as you can with the one resource you do control: yourself. I guess there is some romanticizing involved, but doing a startup is hard and I don't see any way around that. It takes a lot out of you, and I believe you do have to sacrifice a little (maybe a lot) at least in the early days, until you get some traction and can start attracting more resources to your initiative. Maybe, if you're a natural born salesperson and can attract more resources without traction, it's a different story. Or maybe I'm just one of the people who has bought the marketing hype. I probably watched The Social Network one time too many. :-) Or maybe, in my case, it's just because I'm getting older and feel like I'm running out of time to do something big.
- entropyneur 14y ago
  I completely agree that most startup founders are going to be making sacrifices and using all the resources available. If you are expecting anything to come out of your startup you better be really committed to it. I'm against that school of thought on a totally different basis. My issue with it is that it views starting a startup as a kind of gamble. Every sleepless night, weekend at the office and skipped vacation is absolutely guaranteed to come back and bite you in the ass after a certain time. If you are into gambling, you might bet on "hitting a home run" (whatever that means) before that happens. But you might as well try your chances in Vegas. In reality behind every overnight success is skill and years of dedicated work. And there's no way you are going to stay in overdrive for years without wrecking yourself and your startup. I'm speaking from personal experience btw. I used to subscribe to that ideology and I still haven't fully recovered years later.
rprasad 14y ago
Starting a new business is not a sprint, but a marathon. Yes, but marathons are won by those who can run at the speed most others sprint.

andraz 14y ago

Being constantly overworked is not sustainable. However start-up life does include periods of overwork to get things done. Things that you could put off for a couple of days if you had a regular job.

rimantas 14y ago
And what exactly would change in those couple of days?
- andraz 14y ago
  From what I've seen - a lot. You can lose a leading client (or cause huge bump on the road), your marketing plan can fall apart. It's about finishing stuff today, so tomorrow you can do more important strategical stuff. Start-up contrary to some of beliefs is not one big effort to reach the summit. It's a series of small wins (and loses) that accumulate. And you need to be accumulating them faster than your money runs out or competition takes the space, etc.
- matwood 14y ago
  A lot, and those things stack up over time. If I finish something today it frees up my mind to think about some other, possibly larger problem tomorrow. Do this enough times and it can be the difference between success and failure. I know people like to think in big black swan moments, but most of life is not like that. Life is about making lots of little decisions that add up over time. The speech from Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday talks about fighting for each inch on the football field and really how it is no different than life itself. Over time those inches add up.

j45 14y ago

Most folks this way is sold to haven't lived much and the marketing machine reaches them. There's no question its more work than anyone expects. I just believe there's a better way than perpetually stumbling a startup

_delirium 14y ago

I see this genre of writing as less about practical business advice and more about a certain kind of evangelism: leave your old ideas behind and join the new movement! It can be startups, or something else. The general template is an aspiration that a new life awaits you, if you dive in and commit to it, but only if you really treat it as a new life, not just a new job.

mindcrime 14y ago

Starting a new business is not a sprint, but a marathon. And all this romanticizing does a huge disservice to the people who buy the hype and end up burned out. Eh... I don't know. I mean, yeah, I totally agree with the sentiment that "Starting a new business is not a sprint, but a marathon." But, even so, part of the issue is the old saw that (paraphrased) says "an entrepreneur is someone who sets out to change something about the world when he doesn't control the resources necessary to do so." If you buy that definition then doing a startup is trying to do the (nearly) impossible. Given that, you look at the simply ridiculous amount of work in front of you, and the resources you have available, and you don't have much choice but to do as much as you can with the one resource you do control: yourself. I guess there is some romanticizing involved, but doing a startup is hard and I don't see any way around that. It takes a lot out of you, and I believe you do have to sacrifice a little (maybe a lot) at least in the early days, until you get some traction and can start attracting more resources to your initiative. Maybe, if you're a natural born salesperson and can attract more resources without traction, it's a different story. Or maybe I'm just one of the people who has bought the marketing hype. I probably watched The Social Network one time too many. :-) Or maybe, in my case, it's just because I'm getting older and feel like I'm running out of time to do something big.

entropyneur 14y ago
I completely agree that most startup founders are going to be making sacrifices and using all the resources available. If you are expecting anything to come out of your startup you better be really committed to it. I'm against that school of thought on a totally different basis. My issue with it is that it views starting a startup as a kind of gamble. Every sleepless night, weekend at the office and skipped vacation is absolutely guaranteed to come back and bite you in the ass after a certain time. If you are into gambling, you might bet on "hitting a home run" (whatever that means) before that happens. But you might as well try your chances in Vegas. In reality behind every overnight success is skill and years of dedicated work. And there's no way you are going to stay in overdrive for years without wrecking yourself and your startup. I'm speaking from personal experience btw. I used to subscribe to that ideology and I still haven't fully recovered years later.

rprasad 14y ago

Starting a new business is not a sprint, but a marathon. Yes, but marathons are won by those who can run at the speed most others sprint.