Starting a new business is not a sprint, but a marathon. And all this romanticizing does a huge disservice to the people who buy the hype and end up burned out.
Eh... I don't know. I mean, yeah, I totally agree with the sentiment that "Starting a new business is not a sprint, but a marathon." But, even so, part of the issue is the old saw that (paraphrased) says "an entrepreneur is someone who sets out to change something about the world when he doesn't control the resources necessary to do so."
If you buy that definition then doing a startup is trying to do the (nearly) impossible. Given that, you look at the simply ridiculous amount of work in front of you, and the resources you have available, and you don't have much choice but to do as much as you can with the one resource you do control: yourself.
I guess there is some romanticizing involved, but doing a startup is hard and I don't see any way around that. It takes a lot out of you, and I believe you do have to sacrifice a little (maybe a lot) at least in the early days, until you get some traction and can start attracting more resources to your initiative.
Maybe, if you're a natural born salesperson and can attract more resources without traction, it's a different story. Or maybe I'm just one of the people who has bought the marketing hype.
I probably watched The Social Network one time too many. :-) Or maybe, in my case, it's just because I'm getting older and feel like I'm running out of time to do something big.
My issue with it is that it views starting a startup as a kind of gamble. Every sleepless night, weekend at the office and skipped vacation is absolutely guaranteed to come back and bite you in the ass after a certain time. If you are into gambling, you might bet on "hitting a home run" (whatever that means) before that happens. But you might as well try your chances in Vegas. In reality behind every overnight success is skill and years of dedicated work. And there's no way you are going to stay in overdrive for years without wrecking yourself and your startup.
I'm speaking from personal experience btw. I used to subscribe to that ideology and I still haven't fully recovered years later.
Yeah, you definitely can't sprint the entire marathon. I won't argue that. But I think there are moments when you choose to sprint for a while, to achieve certain goals. And even the non "flat out sprint" moments are a hard slog.
The thing that I don't do well, is allowing myself to take time off. I can't escape the sense of feeling guilty when I do... if I go out to watch a movie or go out drinking or whatever, I always find myself thinking "I could be (writing code|doing market research|writing a whitepaper|etc.)" the whole time. So I don't wind up taking much time off. Whether I'll look back on this whole experience as being a net negative, or a net positive, remains TBD.
There's no question its more work than anyone expects. I just believe there's a better way than perpetually stumbling a startup
However start-up life does include periods of overwork to get things done. Things that you could put off for a couple of days if you had a regular job.
It's about finishing stuff today, so tomorrow you can do more important strategical stuff.
Start-up contrary to some of beliefs is not one big effort to reach the summit. It's a series of small wins (and loses) that accumulate. And you need to be accumulating them faster than your money runs out or competition takes the space, etc.
Yes, but marathons are won by those who can run at the speed most others sprint.