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I think Paul Graham summed up the situation fairly well when he wrote: "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life i

I think Paul Graham summed up the situation fairly well when he wrote: "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast." and this: "Combine all these multipliers, and I'm claiming you could be 36 times more productive than you're expected to be in a random corporate job." and the reasons why we might want to do a startup: "For example, one way to make a million dollars would be to work for the Post Office your whole life, and save every penny of your salary. Imagine the stress of working for the Post Office for fifty years. In a startup you compress all this stress into three or four years. You do tend to get a certain bulk discount if you buy the economy-size pain, but you can't evade the fundamental conservation law. If starting a startup were easy, everyone would do it." http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html That essay can be read both as an inspiration and as a warning. On the positive side, it is good to realize how much you can achieve in a few short years. On the negative side, you must be wholly focused on one thing during those few short years. The rest of your life needs to put on hold. A personal anecdote: I am a bit of a news junkie, and I typically spend an hour or two a day reading the news, but when I had my own startup, I gave up reading the news. For the years 2003 to 2004, and for most of 2006, I rarely read the news. That was a huge change of personal habits for me. But avoiding the news was important for me to stay focused. I would write code for 12 hours a day, sometimes 14 hours a day. I think one has to have a very narrow focus during the first year or two of a startup.

jacquesm 12y ago
That's predicated on things working out. In the real world the chances are very large that you will simply lose the years and get nothing back for it. And even if things work out, nothing will give you back the first four years of your childs life. Been there, done that.
teekert 12y ago
The !POTENTIAL! return is correlated with the amount of "focussing on one thing during those short few years". You may end up loosing your kids childhood while still working normal hours the rest of your/his/her life. That is provided not to much of your own money is in your startup, if that is the case you loose even more.
- Iftheshoefits 12y ago
  The probability of missing out on kids' childhood milestones increases as more time is spent away from home. Trying to equate a 9-5 job with startup hours in this regard is intellectually dishonest.
pauljohncleary 12y ago
PG is an investor, so of course he wants founders to be 36x more productive!
- vdaniuk 12y ago
  Yeah, I am constantly surprised at the apparent lack of mathematical thinking about returns on effort in start-ups. The risks of the startup going down without IPO or buyout are extremely high, long hours, equity will be diluted, founders will lose control of the decision making, short term objectives will be prioritized. Returns on efforts in bootstrapping seem to be much much better. Start-ups are really good for VCs, though.
Evgeny 12y ago
but when I had my own startup, I gave up reading the news And my question would be: did you miss something important, that could be life-changing if only you had seen it on the news? Being off the news myself (except tech news) for more than a year now, I'm yet to experience such an "event". But of course some non-technical news "sip through" - get posted on HN, you hear from family etc. So there is no way to really miss something important, and no way to completely stay away from news.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  Isn't there some evidence that staying up to date with current affairs does nothing but cause stress?
- harlanlewis 12y ago
  You're right that the news is rarely actionable or locally 'useful'. But I do read the news and go to events where foreign journalists speak to shape my perception of the world, its diversity and scope, it helps me engage with people from considerably more varied backgrounds (and futures), it reveals new ways to approach or conceptualize unrelated events in my own life. Dont restrict yourself to the SF myopia (which is so easy and attractive). Useful? Nah. Necessary? Absolutely. Skip techcrunch, network tv, and USA today. Look for groups like commonwealthclub.org and find out who smart folk pay attention to (Ezra klein's following list on twitter is pretty golden).
justinpaulson 12y ago
"if you focus you can probably get three times as much done in an hour." This part makes no sense to me. Why can I produce 3x as much work in an hour at a startup because I "focus"? I think that's a bit of a stretch.
- beat 12y ago
  I think over the longer term, it's true, although not for individual hours. Knock some of pg's essays if you want (they deserve it), but "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" hits the nail on the head about productivity. http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
  - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    I actually find this essay odd. What it says is fundamentally true but I'm curious about the allocation of "maker" and "manager". As someone who has worked as a manager and a developer, I value uninterupted time in both roles. It doesn't matter whether I'm planning, or writing a proposal, or coding - large chunks of uninterrupted time are good, a broken up day is bad and less unproductive. Certainly managers might more often have to respond to changing situations (though if you're a developer with any involvement in support you might question that) but if they opt to plan around frequent task changes when they don't have to that's just odd. To me it just feels like a difference between people who manage time well and those who don't, rather than a maker / manager distinction.
- silverbax88 12y ago
  It's absolutely true. I work less now and get far more done (I would say more than 3x) of what I did when I was pulling 7-days-a-week work marathons. People waste lifetimes thinking they are working hard but are really just puttering around. It's been stated by authors (I mentioned Tony Shwartz in another comment and I highly recommend his book) but I offer this analogy: Consider you are standing next to a roaring river. It is treacherous. It is dangerous. On the other side, it looks like it's a lot nicer (more grass, nicer setting, maybe a picnic table all set up) than the side you are standing on. Sure would be nice to get over there. But man, to swim that current...dangerous. So maybe you could build a raft? You start looking for wood, something to put it together. Can't find anything. You try looking at the river to see if there's an easier way to cross. Maybe some shallows? Not sure. Then, behind you, suddenly there is a pack of lions. They look hungry. They ARE hungry. And they see you. And they start loping your way, drool dripping from their teeth. This ain't Hobbs. This is real. These lions are going to literally rip you apart and it's going to happen in a few seconds. How long does it take you to get across that river now? Are you still going to try and build a raft? Still going to look for a shallow end? Still going to worry about getting wet? Focus is a curious thing. We think are 100% committed to something, but we are really not. We achieve what we are truly focused on. I mean, it sure FELT like you were working 100% on getting across the river when you were trying to lash together a raft and when you were scouting the river for an easy way across. But when it meant getting across or being eaten, THAT'S when you focused truly 100%. The secret is learn how to FOCUS, truly focus, put your entire mind intensely on the most important task...then take a break, recover. Then do it again. And wow...does it ever work.
untog 12y ago
You have to remember that PG is a startup investor, and has a vested interest in making you feel as though you need to code for 14 hours a day when he's given you a seed-round investment. The overwhelming odds state that your startup will fail, no matter whether you spent six hours or fourteen hours every day working at it.
- deleted 12y ago
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  - untog 12y ago
    I think you're reading too deeply into what I said. Spending fourteen hours a day might well give you a greater chance of success than working six. But the chances of success are still so remote that it isn't worth ruining your life over. That's the part that PG is invested in - the idea that startup success is within the reach of anyone who works hard enough. It isn't. if we amend your second sentence to read, "while it changes the probability of success, the probability is still low", it no longer really makes sense -- if you have a 30% chance of survival with medicine, should you not take your medicine if it is 3% chance of survival without it? Because the alternative to working at a startup isn't death. It's, y'know, taking a different job.
    - deleted 12y ago
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      - bronson 12y ago
        "Everyone knows that "success" is what you make of it." Where on earth did you get this idea? Success requires a lot of luck too. Not everything is within your control, no matter how many hours you put in. "And a huge commitment of time is just your ticket to the game." Then you overpaid. Are you listening to the scalpers? I know a number of people who got great tickets to the game and lead normal, balanced lives.
josefresco 12y ago
This is one of the areas where I think PG has it completely wrong. Sure if you're a 20-something with no kids/life and only care about your startup, you can code 24/7. But many of us don't fit into this stereotypical startup-founder box that PG and others have created. Some of us have kids, some have partners, some have ... a life! Does PG really want a bunch of code obsessed, single minded founders with no hobbies or life outside of their startup? I can't imagine he does, and as a result he should revise some of his advice. If PG is looking to make a quick buck, churn and burn founders than it all makes sense. But if PG is looking to help founders build sustainable businesses, he should be telling them to clock out, and open your eyes to the world (and people) around you.
- web007 12y ago
  "Does PG really want a bunch of code obsessed, single minded founders with no hobbies or life outside of their startup?" Yes. He wants his startups to work, eat, exercise and sleep. http://adii.me/broken-idols/ http://adii.me/broken-idols/
  - josefresco 12y ago
    Great article, especially love the closing line "Just because something is being endorsed by our idols, doesn't make it ideal." Makes me think of other idols with personal or business traits that are widely lauded but would cause many to ultimately fail.
- smileysteve 12y ago
  > . Sure if you're a 20-something with no kids/life and only care about your startup, you can code 24/7. Disproven by https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/e092ee0b79b7 https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/e092ee0b79b7 If anything, a 20 something is more likely to drive their body and their product in the drastic wrong direction, than somebody older, wiser.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    I didn't say it was the "right" thing to do, only that 20-somethigns can do it because of their current lifestyle. The post referenced in your comment is basically a guy who realized that while he can operate in this way, he shouldn't. Even if you're fresh out of school and have no kids, job, or friends that you care to spend time with, you probably shouldn't be coding 80 hours a week, even if your body and lifestyle permits it.
kimdouglasmason 12y ago
Most startups fail. Throwing some of the best years of your life away and shirking parental responsibilities for a remote chance of a payoff is simply a dangerous form of gambling. Paul Graham is basically just talking his own book. His model is to fund a heap of cheap companies that overwork work young, naive people. Most of these companies fail. The occasional one succeeds enormously which more than covers the costs of the failures. Meanwhile, the starry-eyed young employees often don't notice the system is rotten until their thirties. I was once in the SF startup world, and it's a pretty disgusting place. It's sexist, extremely ageist, intolerant of actual diversity, and anti-family. The sooner that particular culture dies (and make no mistake, it's dying), the better. It's also lazy capitalism; it loads as much risk as possible onto the employees instead of those providing the capital, and many of the twenty-somethings love it. Machismo (look at how hard I work) and confirmation bias abound. You're being played, folks.
- mattgreenrocks 12y ago
  Spot on. The truth hurts. It's telling that these comments rarely solicit many replies on HN, even though they apply directly to what HN is all about. I have no sympathy for willful ignorance.
- vishnugupta 12y ago
  This. I couldn't but agree with every single sentence you've written (though I haven't worked at SF)! I almost fell into this trap while I was inspired to work for a super cool team within a bigger company; a la start-up within a giant. I, unfortunately, got inspired enough that I ignored my new born, didn't see him grow up. I realized that I was being played just in the nick of time (after an year). Irony is that now I'm in a real start up for almost two years and these two years have been best years of my life, both professionally and personally. I get to work on something that's really challenging and rewarding and at the same time I get to spend a few hours of high-energy time with my son, wife and family (I also am very active reader). All this just because I figured out how to balance by spending sane hours at work and work at home late night once in a while when everyone is asleep! My take away from this experience is; after your needs are taken care of to a comfortable extent never trade time for anything. Not for money, not for equity not for anything. Especially if you have a young family. Watch your child grow spend time with her; children develop emotional attachment by the time they are 5 and it only comes with spending time. Even if you don't have family don't trade your time; go see the world, read something new, learn something interesting. But don't give away your time.
sz4kerto 12y ago
What's missing here is a simple fact: your life is different in every period. No matter if you can retire when you're 35: you won't be able to relive your 20s. I am not saying that all in all you won't be better off, but would keep this in mind.

jacquesm 12y ago

That's predicated on things working out. In the real world the chances are very large that you will simply lose the years and get nothing back for it. And even if things work out, nothing will give you back the first four years of your childs life. Been there, done that.

teekert 12y ago

The !POTENTIAL! return is correlated with the amount of "focussing on one thing during those short few years". You may end up loosing your kids childhood while still working normal hours the rest of your/his/her life. That is provided not to much of your own money is in your startup, if that is the case you loose even more.

Iftheshoefits 12y ago
The probability of missing out on kids' childhood milestones increases as more time is spent away from home. Trying to equate a 9-5 job with startup hours in this regard is intellectually dishonest.

pauljohncleary 12y ago

PG is an investor, so of course he wants founders to be 36x more productive!

vdaniuk 12y ago
Yeah, I am constantly surprised at the apparent lack of mathematical thinking about returns on effort in start-ups. The risks of the startup going down without IPO or buyout are extremely high, long hours, equity will be diluted, founders will lose control of the decision making, short term objectives will be prioritized. Returns on efforts in bootstrapping seem to be much much better. Start-ups are really good for VCs, though.

Evgeny 12y ago

but when I had my own startup, I gave up reading the news And my question would be: did you miss something important, that could be life-changing if only you had seen it on the news? Being off the news myself (except tech news) for more than a year now, I'm yet to experience such an "event". But of course some non-technical news "sip through" - get posted on HN, you hear from family etc. So there is no way to really miss something important, and no way to completely stay away from news.

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
Isn't there some evidence that staying up to date with current affairs does nothing but cause stress?
harlanlewis 12y ago
You're right that the news is rarely actionable or locally 'useful'. But I do read the news and go to events where foreign journalists speak to shape my perception of the world, its diversity and scope, it helps me engage with people from considerably more varied backgrounds (and futures), it reveals new ways to approach or conceptualize unrelated events in my own life. Dont restrict yourself to the SF myopia (which is so easy and attractive). Useful? Nah. Necessary? Absolutely. Skip techcrunch, network tv, and USA today. Look for groups like commonwealthclub.org and find out who smart folk pay attention to (Ezra klein's following list on twitter is pretty golden).

justinpaulson 12y ago

"if you focus you can probably get three times as much done in an hour." This part makes no sense to me. Why can I produce 3x as much work in an hour at a startup because I "focus"? I think that's a bit of a stretch.

beat 12y ago
I think over the longer term, it's true, although not for individual hours. Knock some of pg's essays if you want (they deserve it), but "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" hits the nail on the head about productivity. http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  I actually find this essay odd. What it says is fundamentally true but I'm curious about the allocation of "maker" and "manager". As someone who has worked as a manager and a developer, I value uninterupted time in both roles. It doesn't matter whether I'm planning, or writing a proposal, or coding - large chunks of uninterrupted time are good, a broken up day is bad and less unproductive. Certainly managers might more often have to respond to changing situations (though if you're a developer with any involvement in support you might question that) but if they opt to plan around frequent task changes when they don't have to that's just odd. To me it just feels like a difference between people who manage time well and those who don't, rather than a maker / manager distinction.
silverbax88 12y ago
It's absolutely true. I work less now and get far more done (I would say more than 3x) of what I did when I was pulling 7-days-a-week work marathons. People waste lifetimes thinking they are working hard but are really just puttering around. It's been stated by authors (I mentioned Tony Shwartz in another comment and I highly recommend his book) but I offer this analogy: Consider you are standing next to a roaring river. It is treacherous. It is dangerous. On the other side, it looks like it's a lot nicer (more grass, nicer setting, maybe a picnic table all set up) than the side you are standing on. Sure would be nice to get over there. But man, to swim that current...dangerous. So maybe you could build a raft? You start looking for wood, something to put it together. Can't find anything. You try looking at the river to see if there's an easier way to cross. Maybe some shallows? Not sure. Then, behind you, suddenly there is a pack of lions. They look hungry. They ARE hungry. And they see you. And they start loping your way, drool dripping from their teeth. This ain't Hobbs. This is real. These lions are going to literally rip you apart and it's going to happen in a few seconds. How long does it take you to get across that river now? Are you still going to try and build a raft? Still going to look for a shallow end? Still going to worry about getting wet? Focus is a curious thing. We think are 100% committed to something, but we are really not. We achieve what we are truly focused on. I mean, it sure FELT like you were working 100% on getting across the river when you were trying to lash together a raft and when you were scouting the river for an easy way across. But when it meant getting across or being eaten, THAT'S when you focused truly 100%. The secret is learn how to FOCUS, truly focus, put your entire mind intensely on the most important task...then take a break, recover. Then do it again. And wow...does it ever work.

untog 12y ago

You have to remember that PG is a startup investor, and has a vested interest in making you feel as though you need to code for 14 hours a day when he's given you a seed-round investment. The overwhelming odds state that your startup will fail, no matter whether you spent six hours or fourteen hours every day working at it.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- untog 12y ago
  I think you're reading too deeply into what I said. Spending fourteen hours a day might well give you a greater chance of success than working six. But the chances of success are still so remote that it isn't worth ruining your life over. That's the part that PG is invested in - the idea that startup success is within the reach of anyone who works hard enough. It isn't. if we amend your second sentence to read, "while it changes the probability of success, the probability is still low", it no longer really makes sense -- if you have a 30% chance of survival with medicine, should you not take your medicine if it is 3% chance of survival without it? Because the alternative to working at a startup isn't death. It's, y'know, taking a different job.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - bronson 12y ago
      "Everyone knows that "success" is what you make of it." Where on earth did you get this idea? Success requires a lot of luck too. Not everything is within your control, no matter how many hours you put in. "And a huge commitment of time is just your ticket to the game." Then you overpaid. Are you listening to the scalpers? I know a number of people who got great tickets to the game and lead normal, balanced lives.

josefresco 12y ago

This is one of the areas where I think PG has it completely wrong. Sure if you're a 20-something with no kids/life and only care about your startup, you can code 24/7. But many of us don't fit into this stereotypical startup-founder box that PG and others have created. Some of us have kids, some have partners, some have ... a life! Does PG really want a bunch of code obsessed, single minded founders with no hobbies or life outside of their startup? I can't imagine he does, and as a result he should revise some of his advice. If PG is looking to make a quick buck, churn and burn founders than it all makes sense. But if PG is looking to help founders build sustainable businesses, he should be telling them to clock out, and open your eyes to the world (and people) around you.

web007 12y ago
"Does PG really want a bunch of code obsessed, single minded founders with no hobbies or life outside of their startup?" Yes. He wants his startups to work, eat, exercise and sleep. http://adii.me/broken-idols/ http://adii.me/broken-idols/
- josefresco 12y ago
  Great article, especially love the closing line "Just because something is being endorsed by our idols, doesn't make it ideal." Makes me think of other idols with personal or business traits that are widely lauded but would cause many to ultimately fail.
smileysteve 12y ago
> . Sure if you're a 20-something with no kids/life and only care about your startup, you can code 24/7. Disproven by https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/e092ee0b79b7 https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/e092ee0b79b7 If anything, a 20 something is more likely to drive their body and their product in the drastic wrong direction, than somebody older, wiser.
- josefresco 12y ago
  I didn't say it was the "right" thing to do, only that 20-somethigns can do it because of their current lifestyle. The post referenced in your comment is basically a guy who realized that while he can operate in this way, he shouldn't. Even if you're fresh out of school and have no kids, job, or friends that you care to spend time with, you probably shouldn't be coding 80 hours a week, even if your body and lifestyle permits it.

kimdouglasmason 12y ago

Most startups fail. Throwing some of the best years of your life away and shirking parental responsibilities for a remote chance of a payoff is simply a dangerous form of gambling. Paul Graham is basically just talking his own book. His model is to fund a heap of cheap companies that overwork work young, naive people. Most of these companies fail. The occasional one succeeds enormously which more than covers the costs of the failures. Meanwhile, the starry-eyed young employees often don't notice the system is rotten until their thirties. I was once in the SF startup world, and it's a pretty disgusting place. It's sexist, extremely ageist, intolerant of actual diversity, and anti-family. The sooner that particular culture dies (and make no mistake, it's dying), the better. It's also lazy capitalism; it loads as much risk as possible onto the employees instead of those providing the capital, and many of the twenty-somethings love it. Machismo (look at how hard I work) and confirmation bias abound. You're being played, folks.

mattgreenrocks 12y ago
Spot on. The truth hurts. It's telling that these comments rarely solicit many replies on HN, even though they apply directly to what HN is all about. I have no sympathy for willful ignorance.
vishnugupta 12y ago
This. I couldn't but agree with every single sentence you've written (though I haven't worked at SF)! I almost fell into this trap while I was inspired to work for a super cool team within a bigger company; a la start-up within a giant. I, unfortunately, got inspired enough that I ignored my new born, didn't see him grow up. I realized that I was being played just in the nick of time (after an year). Irony is that now I'm in a real start up for almost two years and these two years have been best years of my life, both professionally and personally. I get to work on something that's really challenging and rewarding and at the same time I get to spend a few hours of high-energy time with my son, wife and family (I also am very active reader). All this just because I figured out how to balance by spending sane hours at work and work at home late night once in a while when everyone is asleep! My take away from this experience is; after your needs are taken care of to a comfortable extent never trade time for anything. Not for money, not for equity not for anything. Especially if you have a young family. Watch your child grow spend time with her; children develop emotional attachment by the time they are 5 and it only comes with spending time. Even if you don't have family don't trade your time; go see the world, read something new, learn something interesting. But don't give away your time.

sz4kerto 12y ago

What's missing here is a simple fact: your life is different in every period. No matter if you can retire when you're 35: you won't be able to relive your 20s. I am not saying that all in all you won't be better off, but would keep this in mind.