It does blow away a social life and is antithetical to a significant other. PG clearly states elsewhere that he had neither for all but a very short part of th

It does blow away a social life and is antithetical to a significant other. PG clearly states elsewhere that he had neither for all but a very short part of the time that he was working on Viaweb, and implies or states in numerous places that this kind of dedication is necessary to achieve startup success. The theory goes that the financial reward of a startup is a highly dense, compressed version of what you would otherwise be collecting through decades of salaried work of some sort, but is risky and always close to the margin of failure. So, the account goes, it requires a level of commitment that pretty much necessarily precludes a "healthy work-life balance."