Crazy work hours, do more with less, etc etc. If something needs to happen, fuck you, drop everything and do it. Of course this is said in a sunny, positive, optimistic way but the reality is the same. I'm the only person on my "team" that should realistically have at least 3 people on it. Soul crushing. I just wanna work 9-5 or 9-6 or whatever and leave it at the office.
The truth is though is that wore me down. I ended up earning myself a chronic illness which severely slowed me down from the startup pace. I also have a family and as my kids grew, so did the time demands. I thought that my partners would understand, given I've put my life into everything I worked on, but that never materialized.
In the end, startup after startup, I've found that there's little room for sickness and especially a family. Sure, when you're young it's ok, but as you get older, or as your family ages, there is this idea of your family just has to understand that you have to do this to make all their dreams come true: founders say that family and health comes first, then try to persuade you that those really come second.
I really do understand where they are coming from. It's all a high pressure game with very little likelihood of succeeding. First to market matters more than not. Notice how many founders are either single or have marriage issues. Survival comes first for them.
I had to ask myself if that's really what I wanted. It turns out, all I really want to do is be good at what I'm working on, support my family, and have coworkers that I can enjoy being around because they value the same things. I found that in larger corporations that weren't about survival anymore. That's what informed my search most of all: the values of the peers I would be working with.