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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes wonder if the Valley culture doesn't socially construct some of the startup pathologies. For example, startups taking over your life: why does this happen? Is this because startups take over your life and nothing can be done about this? I am skeptical of this: I run a small business, the time demands are rather modest, and I live a life outside of work. I'm surely not uniquely in a position to do this.

Now, step back: who here wants to say any variant of "That isn't the same thing!", "That isn't possible!", or "You are insufficiently dedicated and will never be truly successful!" You see, that is why startups take over your life: because you expect them to take over your life, everyone you know and talk to and model your behavior on expects them to take over your life, and if they're not taking over your life you are told you are doing something wrong.

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Viaweb took over my life when we were working on it. I worked all the time I wasn't sleeping. Not because I was inefficient or thought it was the conventional thing to do (I knew practically nothing about startup conventions then) but because there was just so much work to do.

I suppose I could have worked slower and things might have turned out the same anyway. But probably not that much slower. And I certainly had no idea at the time how much margin for error I had.

Now, step back: who here wants to say any variant of "That isn't the same thing!", "That isn't possible!", or "You are insufficiently dedicated and will never be truly successful!"

I will. Your second and third obections are straw men, but the first sounds reasonable to me. I don't see a modestly demanding side-project from a day job (to use your terms) as quite the same thing as what the quotes in the OP are about.

You make a good point about some patterns being socially constructed. That could be a factor here, and an interesting one. But I think you spoil it by excessively extrapolating from your own situation. This is a more subtle question than that.

The startup I'm working on occupies the bulk of my life right now (I'm not sure I'd say "taken over", since it's a far from hostile occupation). I can't imagine doing what I'm doing in an arm's-length or part-time way, or even a full-time way in the 8-hours-a-day sense. It requires more creative energy and focus than anything I've worked on in the past. I can't turn that on and off. To try to fit it into a conventional rhythm would kill it. Certainly this has its downsides. But the conventional definitions of "balance" have their downsides too. The vast majority of people I observe whose lives are "balanced" by those definitions are simply not doing anything very ambitious or creative. Of course I'm not advocating imbalance as an alternative as such, but I do say that any real discussion of this question needs to take this fact into account. Most don't. (Find me one!) Most utter platitudes about "work-life balance" and stop there.

As an aside, listening to Tony Hsieh yesterday made a lightbulb go on about why I find the phrase "work-life balance" so... debasing. It's because it assumes that work is not life.

I've sold shareware for 3 years, similar to what you and many other lone developers I know personally and online are doing (seems like mac, iPhone, and casual games.). The thing is, when a group of developers decide to band together to try to develop something bigger, they all have to hurry to keep the momentum going, as there are more people who might quit due to running out of money, going to grad school, getting married, etc. At the same time, the vision of the company should be bigger than that of a lone shareware author, such that it more than compensates for going-for-it-alone.

Many are happy to have a lifestyle business in addition to their full-time job, and feeling respected by posting on Joel on Software and these discussions. Others have opportunities, either because they are young and have college friends, or are older with money saved up and a list of industry contacts, to jump in on a new idea together. This dilutes ownership but allows one to iterate faster, and avoid being the only one outside of their customers who actually know and care about their product.

I think this is really key, that people take a step forward together as a group, the first person stumbles and from that point on, you're all running to keep from falling. It's about the momentum you build and also the perception of that momentum that keeps the group's morale up and everyone moving forward.

Patrick, I definitely both respect and admire the business you built. You can also say I'm pro the 37 signals mantra.

But I think your advice is specific to the model you've built and the output you are yielding. I don't remember the numbers but I think you are somewhere around 100k (or less) in yearly revenue? Startups, whether logical/warranted or not, seem to be aiming orders of magnitude more than this, yes?

"But I think your advice is specific to the model you've built and the output you are yielding."

This is equally true for what pg is saying, of course.

Suspect it also has something to do with the presence (or not) of a full time job. I think working is the smart move in Patrick's case for the extra financial freedom, but it definitely takes pressure off.

I think there are 2 good reasons for a startup to take over your life:

1. If your startup is succeeding wildly. If you were seeing amazing returns from your time(i.e. maybe you work 80 hours in a week but made $10,000 and growing or signed up 20,000 new users), it's hard to think about anything else. You realize that you have stumbled upon a rare opportunity and it's worth it to sacrifice other things for a short time.

2. You don't know any better. The first time you do a startup it's hard to know if it's succeeding or not, and everything takes longer because you don't know what you're doing and you make more mistakes. But likely you've read tons of stories about startups that fit #1, and because you don't know any better you confuse cause and effect and think that working 100 hours is going to make your startup succeed.

These are the two good excuses that I can think of for dedicating a disproportionate amount of your time to your startup. My general advice is to not take it too seriously unless you've stumbled upon a number 1. Life is too short. And it's not too hard to do a startup and enjoy life at the same time if you don't make big mistakes.

From my experience, there are a few things that can make your start-up take over your life: customers, investors, competition and personal drive.

Depending on your market segment, customers can be very demanding. If your web site goes down at midnight on Friday, you can't very well let it wait until Monday at 9:00 to put right, can you?

Investors have fronted you money on the expectation of explosive growth. If you don't deliver that growth, they might not be around the next time that you need cash.

In web-based businesses, speed is a major asset to keep you ahead of the competition. Hopefully, you've got a head start on the copy-cats, but there are more of them, and some of them might even be as smart as you.

Finally, there's personal drive -- as I think you've identified, start-ups do attract a certain personality type who aren't the kind to leave a job half-done and call it a day.

In closing, I would ask you a question -- you run a small business, but is it a start-up? PG has been pretty clear in many of his other essays that these two are not interchangeable. After all, the start-ups that are being discussed here are hoping not to be small businesses for long!

Jobs in many, if not most professions commonly will "take over your life" if you let them. In many cases it is expected.

pg's definition of a startup is a small business that intends to get big. He says that this is the ordinary Valley definition. This is the kind of business that needs the funding and connections that are available in the valley. So the question becomes: why do people want to start that kind of business?

your definition of small business seems to be the logical/literal one, which includes all businesses that start small, including lifestyle businesses (nothing wrong with that; it's just a different definition of the word, and a different kind of business).

/me rides off into sunset

Surely it is until you prove it succeeds it's quite likely it will fail - if you have not launched or have launced but have no users or are not profitable it's seems likely you will fail without a lot more work.

I suspect from your description that your business is already successful and is a low risk of failure.

It isn't the valley, it is the gig. I have been at the heart of one startup and part of several others. I grew up as part of a small business. These experiences have led me to the goofy conclusion that the notion of a "job" with regular hours is an artifice. In a startup, you are likely doing something that has never been done before--it is very exciting, compelling, and as PG says, there is just too much to do.

I would say that the valley culture is an effect of hosting many startups, not the cause.

You are not alone. For an extreme example see http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rol....

However I think that most good business ideas require enough work, and are in landscapes that change quickly enough, that they really do require a larger time dedication from someone.

Well, I usually work more than 40 hrs/week on my startup because I can't stop thinking about it. But sometimes I just run out of gas and only do the bare minimum for a week or two.

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