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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

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.

mindcrime 14y ago
But 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. Yeah, you definitely can't sprint the entire marathon. I won't argue that. But I think there are moments when you choose to sprint for a while, to achieve certain goals. And even the non "flat out sprint" moments are a hard slog. The thing that I don't do well, is allowing myself to take time off. I can't escape the sense of feeling guilty when I do... if I go out to watch a movie or go out drinking or whatever, I always find myself thinking "I could be (writing code|doing market research|writing a whitepaper|etc.)" the whole time. So I don't wind up taking much time off. Whether I'll look back on this whole experience as being a net negative, or a net positive, remains TBD.
- entropyneur 14y ago
  Actually I still feel the guilt when I take time off too, I just learned to do it anyway :)

mindcrime 14y ago

But 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. Yeah, you definitely can't sprint the entire marathon. I won't argue that. But I think there are moments when you choose to sprint for a while, to achieve certain goals. And even the non "flat out sprint" moments are a hard slog. The thing that I don't do well, is allowing myself to take time off. I can't escape the sense of feeling guilty when I do... if I go out to watch a movie or go out drinking or whatever, I always find myself thinking "I could be (writing code|doing market research|writing a whitepaper|etc.)" the whole time. So I don't wind up taking much time off. Whether I'll look back on this whole experience as being a net negative, or a net positive, remains TBD.

entropyneur 14y ago
Actually I still feel the guilt when I take time off too, I just learned to do it anyway :)