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we moved our startup from London to SV in Jan 2007 partly due to this line of thinking. it is false, no-one productively works 24/7 and trying to do so is a mis
by Harj 17y ago
we moved our startup from London to SV in Jan 2007 partly due to this line of thinking. it is false, no-one productively works 24/7 and trying to do so is a mistake i don’t intend to repeat on my next startup.
the vision of the workaholic, always at their desk entrepreneur is in my experience usually propagated by people with little actual operational experience of raw startups. this post from Naval Ravikant sums up what i've learnt about productivity, http://startupboy.com/2005/11/29/the-80-hour-myth/ http://startupboy.com/2005/11/29/the-80-hour-myth/
and on the london vs SV work ethic. my peers in london work just as hard as my peers in SV.
- felipe 17y agoI would vote you up ten times if I could.
- DenisM 17y agoI think there is a popular ideology (perhaps of protestant roots) that makes it "noble" to work long hours, hence why such stories are appealing to readers (and writers). It's a kind of narrative fallacy which people use to explain success without getting into too much detail: "he worked long hours he succeeded, this makes sense to me logically and ethically as those who work visibly hard are truly worthy". If you want to create a great company it's best to seek proper work/life balance that delivers best outcome over the entire period of the few years, rather than optimize an appealing narrative. The worst thing you can do it get trapped in the narrative yourself.
- mahmud 17y agoStartup scenesters tend to confuse work with "features"; the most productive days are actually spent pulling contracts over the phone, not implementing RESTful APIs for exotic handhelds :-)