To point out, "A few weeks ago, my startup did a crunch mode week before releasing our beta to the first set of users." You did -one week- of crunch. That's no

To point out, "A few weeks ago, my startup did a crunch mode week before releasing our beta to the first set of users." You did -one week- of crunch. That's not what the article is speaking to. You're talking that "if you're not willing to put in a ton of hours", "my employee and I feel incredibly lucky", etc etc etc, but you only pulled a -week- of crunch. This isn't talking about where your down time outside of work sometimes incorporates thoughts of "what could we do better at work?", nor is it talking about "We're so close; if we just work a little longer this week we'll hit this deadline, learn from it, and can take a break right after", it's talking about the repeated pattern in some places of crunch mode all the time, > 40 hours a week for multiple weeks, which research has shown will lead to negative performance.