2 ms·

You know, let's be honest--starting your first business is hard, because you have to learn about marketing, customer outreach, listening to people and connectin

by Frondo 11y ago

You know, let's be honest--starting your first business is hard, because you have to learn about marketing, customer outreach, listening to people and connecting them with things they want, etc. But 100 hours a week, for years? There's something bigger going wrong there--either you're trying to sell something people don't want, you've hired a lot of the wrong people, or whatever, I don't know. That's not typical, and it's certainly not praiseworthy. As for that "indefinite free money for past work," again, you're free to say you want that, and right now it's certainly yours to try and put into a contract. I don't agree that it's moral or right or deserved, no matter how many 100 hour weeks you work.

smtddr 11y ago
>>But 100 hours a week, for years? There's something bigger going wrong there--either you're trying to sell something people don't want, you've hired a lot of the wrong people, or whatever, I don't know. That's not typical, and it's certainly not praiseworthy. You really need to get back to us after you've tried starting your own company. Even when you're not officially on the clock, it's impossible to put it out of your mind. I do not envy start-up founders; I'm quite happy with my inflated bay area engineer salary and up-to-date skillset that allows me to simply jump ship or swim to the next luxury yacht when the current one capsizes. (Honest) founders really pour their heart & soul into the business and have probably made some personal-life sacrifices and trade-offs. Founders more than deserve the lion's share of any benefits yielded by the company.
- Frondo 11y ago
  And I'd say, you really need to step outside the YC bubble, if you think 100 hours a week for years is at all normal anywhere in the business world.
  - leesalminen 11y ago
    When you're truly passionate about what you do, how you do it, who you do it with and who you're doing it for it doesn't matter what the "normal" business world does. You end up doing what's right for your company at that moment. I don't go to bed without reminding myself that this isn't just for me. It's for my employees (livelihood), my customers (their businesses) and my family (creating a better life). When you frame it like that, hours just turn into numbers. It's irrelevant. Results matter.
    - s73v3r 11y ago
      "When you're truly passionate about what you do" I'm sorry, but that line is just absolute bullcrap.
      - leesalminen 11y ago
        What a constructive comment. Care to elaborate? IMO, it's not bull crap. I may not care about the little problem in solving today but I am mist certainly passionate about my company, my employees, our product and my family.
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    And I'd say, you really need to step outside the YC bubble YC has nothing to do with it. We're not a YC company, and we have taken no outside capital at all, which is one major reason I've been working so hard... because everything that needs to be done, falls on the founders to do. There is nobody else, since we can't afford to hire anybody. OK, we did have a paid intern one summer, but that's the only time we paid anybody anything. Now, of course, you could say "well, then go raise a round and hire people". To which I can only say, we have made the decisions we made, for reasons that are important to us, and we are happy with them. I think the day will come when we will look to rise outside money, but it'll be when the time is right. Anyway, just wanted to make it clear that my personal story has nothing to do with YC, or the "pressures of being a VC funded company" or anything of that sort.
    - Frondo 11y ago
      I don't know anything about your business. I do know if I were talking to any of my business friends, and I said, "I've got a great new idea for a business. The model depends on me working 100 hours a week for years on end," they'd laugh. It wouldn't sound like a serious venture, it'd sound like I was joking. (Or, to be totally honest, it'd sound like I was taking a mean-spirited dig at the internet startup people who think that's not just OK, but normal!) I'm glad you made the decisions you did. I wouldn't be happy with any choice that threatened my health as severely as you've described above, but that's where my priorities lay, and I totally get that you have others. I do hope you have success, and can stop working such long hours, and that it comes before you have to make further sacrifices to your health.
leesalminen 11y ago
We're a 6 person team in B2B SaaS with multiple hundreds of customers, growing in double digit percentages per month. I've worked 80-100 hour weeks for the past 18 months. It's not unheard of, and isn't necessarily due to staffing issues (maybe quantity of staff). I count driving, showering and cooking as work. Even though I'm physically doing something else, I am primarily thinking about work at those times. Doing things without big time VC money is a daunting task and can easily consume your entire life.
- npizzolato 11y ago
  With that definition, you may as well count sleeping as work too if you dream about your job. It sure is easy to work 24x7 when you count everything you do as work!
  - leesalminen 11y ago
    My job is problem solving. Problem solving requires thought - sometimes large quantities of it. That can take time, and it can be hard to say "I will only think about this problem from 9-5 today". I've awoken numerous times in the middle of the night with an "a-ha" feeling and immediately started coding. Does that count?
mindcrime 11y ago
There's something bigger going wrong there--either you're trying to sell something people don't want, you've hired a lot of the wrong people, or whatever, I don't know. I'll just politely ask that you refrain from judging us when you don't know anything at all about our circumstances, situation, goals, etc. That's not typical, and it's certainly not praiseworthy. I never asked for any praise. In fact, I'll be the first to say that some aspects of my life have been downright stupid. My point was just to illustrate, through one example that I happen to be intimately familiar with, that starting a company is hard. Much, much harder than most people realize, if they haven't been through it. As for that "indefinite free money for past work," again, you're free to say you want that, and right now it's certainly yours to try and put into a contract. I don't agree that it's moral or right or deserved, no matter how many 100 hour weeks you work. But it's not "indefinite free money" anyway. It's "a percentage of the profits this company might make, relative to my ownership stake". The thing is, the company isn't guaranteed to make any certain amount of profit, or even any at all. At any time, things could take a downward turn, and any profit (and my cut thereof) could dry up. That's back to one of the main reasons that founders get a larger share, because they take on more risk... but you have to realize, there's no point where that risk ends. As long as a substantial portion of your income is tied to your company, whether your actively working or not, it's at risk. So it's not necessarily the cushy "sit back and enjoy your plunder" scenario you seem to be envisioning.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  In the world of Frondo there would be no discount on future revenues, which implies a world without risk and that's the fundamental that he's missing.
- Frondo 11y ago
  I'll remind you just as politely that when we post our experiences to public forums, judging comes part and parcel with that. But, you know, I don't need to refer to your specific situation at all, and I stand by the statement: any business that requires 100 hours per week for years from anyone is either understaffed or (if it can't actually pay for people to do those hours) not really a viable business. You can do what you want. If you want to work 150 hours a week, and scrape out 18 hours of sleep among those 7 days, go nuts, I don't really care. But to say "I'm a businessman, I have to put in 100 hours a week for years on end," no, sorry, I'm not buying that there's actually a very good business there, no matter what the business model is or who's involved. And that says nothing about the questions about rent-seeking that kicked off this thread...
shard 11y ago
Take a look at the restaurant business. When you open a new restaurant, working from before opening to after closing every day is not atypical, even when you are selling something people want and have hired the right people. Going months without a day off is unsurprising. It may not be praiseworthy, but it's not something to look down your nose at either. Its just solid, honest hard work that's required to establish a restaurant from scratch. And if the restaurant is successful enough for the owner to try starting a branch, then the owner is going to have to split his time between the two, thereby expecting all the profit from the first restraunt while being at the new restaurant a majority of the time to get it running. Is that rent seeking, or free money for past work? Perhaps you think so, but I don't agree, and likely most people would not agree either.

by Frondo 11y ago

smtddr 11y ago

>>But 100 hours a week, for years? There's something bigger going wrong there--either you're trying to sell something people don't want, you've hired a lot of the wrong people, or whatever, I don't know. That's not typical, and it's certainly not praiseworthy. You really need to get back to us after you've tried starting your own company. Even when you're not officially on the clock, it's impossible to put it out of your mind. I do not envy start-up founders; I'm quite happy with my inflated bay area engineer salary and up-to-date skillset that allows me to simply jump ship or swim to the next luxury yacht when the current one capsizes. (Honest) founders really pour their heart & soul into the business and have probably made some personal-life sacrifices and trade-offs. Founders more than deserve the lion's share of any benefits yielded by the company.

Frondo 11y ago
And I'd say, you really need to step outside the YC bubble, if you think 100 hours a week for years is at all normal anywhere in the business world.
- leesalminen 11y ago
  When you're truly passionate about what you do, how you do it, who you do it with and who you're doing it for it doesn't matter what the "normal" business world does. You end up doing what's right for your company at that moment. I don't go to bed without reminding myself that this isn't just for me. It's for my employees (livelihood), my customers (their businesses) and my family (creating a better life). When you frame it like that, hours just turn into numbers. It's irrelevant. Results matter.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    "When you're truly passionate about what you do" I'm sorry, but that line is just absolute bullcrap.
    - leesalminen 11y ago
      What a constructive comment. Care to elaborate? IMO, it's not bull crap. I may not care about the little problem in solving today but I am mist certainly passionate about my company, my employees, our product and my family.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  And I'd say, you really need to step outside the YC bubble YC has nothing to do with it. We're not a YC company, and we have taken no outside capital at all, which is one major reason I've been working so hard... because everything that needs to be done, falls on the founders to do. There is nobody else, since we can't afford to hire anybody. OK, we did have a paid intern one summer, but that's the only time we paid anybody anything. Now, of course, you could say "well, then go raise a round and hire people". To which I can only say, we have made the decisions we made, for reasons that are important to us, and we are happy with them. I think the day will come when we will look to rise outside money, but it'll be when the time is right. Anyway, just wanted to make it clear that my personal story has nothing to do with YC, or the "pressures of being a VC funded company" or anything of that sort.
  - Frondo 11y ago
    I don't know anything about your business. I do know if I were talking to any of my business friends, and I said, "I've got a great new idea for a business. The model depends on me working 100 hours a week for years on end," they'd laugh. It wouldn't sound like a serious venture, it'd sound like I was joking. (Or, to be totally honest, it'd sound like I was taking a mean-spirited dig at the internet startup people who think that's not just OK, but normal!) I'm glad you made the decisions you did. I wouldn't be happy with any choice that threatened my health as severely as you've described above, but that's where my priorities lay, and I totally get that you have others. I do hope you have success, and can stop working such long hours, and that it comes before you have to make further sacrifices to your health.

leesalminen 11y ago

We're a 6 person team in B2B SaaS with multiple hundreds of customers, growing in double digit percentages per month. I've worked 80-100 hour weeks for the past 18 months. It's not unheard of, and isn't necessarily due to staffing issues (maybe quantity of staff). I count driving, showering and cooking as work. Even though I'm physically doing something else, I am primarily thinking about work at those times. Doing things without big time VC money is a daunting task and can easily consume your entire life.

npizzolato 11y ago
With that definition, you may as well count sleeping as work too if you dream about your job. It sure is easy to work 24x7 when you count everything you do as work!
- leesalminen 11y ago
  My job is problem solving. Problem solving requires thought - sometimes large quantities of it. That can take time, and it can be hard to say "I will only think about this problem from 9-5 today". I've awoken numerous times in the middle of the night with an "a-ha" feeling and immediately started coding. Does that count?

mindcrime 11y ago

There's something bigger going wrong there--either you're trying to sell something people don't want, you've hired a lot of the wrong people, or whatever, I don't know. I'll just politely ask that you refrain from judging us when you don't know anything at all about our circumstances, situation, goals, etc. That's not typical, and it's certainly not praiseworthy. I never asked for any praise. In fact, I'll be the first to say that some aspects of my life have been downright stupid. My point was just to illustrate, through one example that I happen to be intimately familiar with, that starting a company is hard. Much, much harder than most people realize, if they haven't been through it. As for that "indefinite free money for past work," again, you're free to say you want that, and right now it's certainly yours to try and put into a contract. I don't agree that it's moral or right or deserved, no matter how many 100 hour weeks you work. But it's not "indefinite free money" anyway. It's "a percentage of the profits this company might make, relative to my ownership stake". The thing is, the company isn't guaranteed to make any certain amount of profit, or even any at all. At any time, things could take a downward turn, and any profit (and my cut thereof) could dry up. That's back to one of the main reasons that founders get a larger share, because they take on more risk... but you have to realize, there's no point where that risk ends. As long as a substantial portion of your income is tied to your company, whether your actively working or not, it's at risk. So it's not necessarily the cushy "sit back and enjoy your plunder" scenario you seem to be envisioning.

jacquesm 11y ago
In the world of Frondo there would be no discount on future revenues, which implies a world without risk and that's the fundamental that he's missing.
Frondo 11y ago
I'll remind you just as politely that when we post our experiences to public forums, judging comes part and parcel with that. But, you know, I don't need to refer to your specific situation at all, and I stand by the statement: any business that requires 100 hours per week for years from anyone is either understaffed or (if it can't actually pay for people to do those hours) not really a viable business. You can do what you want. If you want to work 150 hours a week, and scrape out 18 hours of sleep among those 7 days, go nuts, I don't really care. But to say "I'm a businessman, I have to put in 100 hours a week for years on end," no, sorry, I'm not buying that there's actually a very good business there, no matter what the business model is or who's involved. And that says nothing about the questions about rent-seeking that kicked off this thread...

shard 11y ago

Take a look at the restaurant business. When you open a new restaurant, working from before opening to after closing every day is not atypical, even when you are selling something people want and have hired the right people. Going months without a day off is unsurprising. It may not be praiseworthy, but it's not something to look down your nose at either. Its just solid, honest hard work that's required to establish a restaurant from scratch. And if the restaurant is successful enough for the owner to try starting a branch, then the owner is going to have to split his time between the two, thereby expecting all the profit from the first restraunt while being at the new restaurant a majority of the time to get it running. Is that rent seeking, or free money for past work? Perhaps you think so, but I don't agree, and likely most people would not agree either.