I heard the same thing at FOWA in Miami this year from Gary Vaynerchuk (and have heard it from him before at other conferences). He said, paraphrasing: If you

I heard the same thing at FOWA in Miami this year from Gary Vaynerchuk (and have heard it from him before at other conferences). He said, paraphrasing: If you can't quit your job to follow your dream and build your startup because you have to take care of your family, then work 9-5 at the job you hate to pay the bills, then work 6-3am on the startup. At face value, that's great advice. But I don't think it is that black and white for everyone. I don't know if DHH or Garyvee have kids, but for many people, if you really do need to support a family, then working 9am-3am every day is a pretty bad way to do it. Yeah, you might come out the other end running a business you love that's making you rich, but you'll probably be divorced and have kids that resent you. Or be sick and run down from all that lack of sleep. If you have diapers to buy, ramen profitability might take longer to achieve. Or might not be an option at all. If you have personal relationships you value, working 18 hours per day might not be the best idea (if you can avoid it). It really depends on your priorities. If supporting your family and spending time with them is important to you, then yeah, lack of time might really be a problem on the road to starting up. DHH is right that complaining about it isn't productive, but he comes across sounding arrogant when he writes it off as a non-issue.