How many hours are startup team members working on average?

Every waking minute and then some (slept 2 hrs per night several days this week). The trick is getting "high-impact" hours in. That's a scrappy basic solution that solves a time-consumic problem. The witty action that draws in a bunch of new users. The half-lucky-half-prepared encounter with the right person who can help with something. I try to find those "amplified" hours and celebrate on the inside every time I can get a normal week's worth of work in a day. It feels like you're cheating death.

The rest of the time I am fitting in the full-time days of 3 people in one 24 hour period. One is a student and two are tech and business founders of a startup that just took off with customers (trying to keep up the 10% growth daily while raising engagement rates).

I don't do more than a 40 hour week... there's no point in overworking, becoming emotionally strained, physically weak, risking depression, taking time away from socialising (networking), reading for pleasure (which rewires my creative processes)

Honestly, the amount of times I see entrepreneurs flaunting a badge of honour that they work 5am to 11pm, and then they wonder why they're fat, have spotty skin, no girl to warm their bed and only 6 friends to call on when times get bad... Working in a startup takes SO MUCH MORE soft skills and attributes that come from being out there living in the world.

If you're never in the world, how are you going to fix any of it's problems?

the guys who care are probably working nonstop...anyone with skin in the game (meaningful equity) will work their asses off. but this doesn't translate cleanly into hours worked. i also somewhat harshly believe that lazy founders should forfeit the equity and quit altogether. tech guys focus in spurts and work whenever they want (as they should!); and if they know what they're doing, they also properly manage the risk of burn out. so a tech guy who's hustling will prob code for ~40 hours but also do a ton of background research and toying around throughout the week to make his product better. non-tech guys consider networking work, so the number of hours doesn't mean much. working that biz dev relationship from 10pm-2am doesn't count! i've certainly seen teams come together and work insane hours to meet a deadline, or fix problems...but unless you want to see tons of mistakes, this type of schedule is hardly sustainable. as a rule: in a normal environment, balance is crucial.

1 million hours or 5min. Depending on the timeframe to average to.