The Unintended Consequences of Startups - Docstoc CEO

http://www.jasonnazar.com/2009/04/18/the-unintended-consequences-of-startups/

by cera • 17 years ago

33 19 17 years ago

stuff4ben• 17 years ago

I keep seeing these types of articles and it's the same story over and over again, "one must work 20 hours a day 7 days a week in order to be successful with your startup." Is this always the case? I can't imagine it is. Surely there are people out there who ran their startup successfully on a part-time basis while working a full time job and enjoying quality family time.

mattmaroon2• 17 years ago

It's not only not the case that you must do it, it's usually suboptimal, it's just hard to tell that from the inside. He even mentions himself that he's working at a greatly reduced capacity. If he spent less time at work and more time on himself, he'd probably get more done.

tdavis• 17 years ago

Well, here's the thing:

(a) That is what we are told and

(b) That is what is reinforced by those who have been successful

How many stories have you heard that were basically, "Yeah, I started this company part-time, never worked on it more than a few hours a day because I had this other job, and it was bought for 20 million bucks!" Personally, I've heard none.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I still work 20 hours a day, because I don't. Last summer I was close, though. I stopped sacrificing my health at the beginning of this year when I began going to the gym every day again and stopped smoking a pack a day. Now that spring is upon us, I'm even beginning to remember a time when "woman" was a word in my vernacular.

The reason you see these types of articles and the reason you will continue to is because for those of us who have no other jobs, our startups are our lives. I could work for Big Co. and go home at the end of the day not at all worrying about whether or not they will be there tomorrow. The company would pay me X to perform Y and that would be exactly what I'd perform (if I wanted a promotion, maybe Y+1).

At TicketStumbler, I am not merely a cog. If I don't write code for that new feature or fix that bug or setup that new server, nobody else is going to. This means that not only do I constantly have a lot to do, but it all has pretty much the same priority: done yesterday. And if I decide to take a few days off instead of doing one of those things? I get the pleasure of feeling guilty about it the entire time.

So it basically boils down to: at an early-stage startup you have the pleasure of controlling your destiny and being your own boss; for those of us who cannot stomach traditional employment, we feel as if we actually have a soul. The downside? Well, you live in a constant and unrelenting state of stress and obligation. The effects of that state differ from person to person, but alienations/estrangement from family and friends and unwillingness to prioritize anything other than the company are common ones.

breck3• 17 years ago

(b) I've heard of many Internet companies like this.

In fact, most of the stories I've heard of companies doing the 20-hour day thing end in failure. I think more people try it that way.

Actually, I should rephrase that---companies that START OUT with 20 hour days more often than not end in failure.

The reason why is simple: there's no reason why you need to work that hard until you've found a "magic model" and are scaling it.

In other words, here is my blueprint for maximizing your odds of starting a successful Internet company:

a) have stable income.

b) start side projects part time, don't work on them for more than a few hours a day.

c) once one of the side projects is generating significant revenue more than income source A, or is growing like a Twitter, then slowly ramp up to where you're working the 10+ hour day thing

d) sell for bazillions

If you skip A and B, you will likely fail.

anuraggoel2• 17 years ago

'Hard work' is a relative term. In the end, it's all about competition. If you're building anything worthwhile, you will have competitors - if not in the beginning, after you launch. In order to be better than the competition, working smart is not enough, because you're not the only smart person around. The only option is to work smarter and harder than the competition. Now you could be in an industry where everyone works 8 hours a day, so working harder wouldn't give you too much incremental advantage. Unfortunately (or fortunately for those who can work 'hard'), tech startups are not that industry.

gruseom• 17 years ago

From what I've observed, when people say they spend "X hours a day working" (for some outrageously high X) what they're really talking about is how much time they spend at work, which is not the same thing. These quantitative games are a bit silly. It reminds me of when people brag about how many lines of code they churn out, as if that were a good thing.

There is a real issue, though. Most startups demand an intensity of commitment that is difficult to reconcile with part-time engagement or even, it seems, with so-called work-life balance.

access_denied• 17 years ago

> that is difficult to reconcile

Or even just in your head! You are constantly thinking about the project and that stresses you out.

DenisM• 17 years ago

I suggest you to read the "Founders at work" book and look for common patterns among the successful founders.

Personally, I found exactly one thing in common - determination to get something done. That's it.

mattmaroon2• 17 years ago

By losing that much weight that quickly he is actually overcompensating for one unhealthy behavior with another. He'd be much better off trying to sustainably eat better over a long period of time.

xcombinator2• 17 years ago

In university I had a teacher specialist on industry production factories.

He said something I grabbed: "When I go to a company, in five minutes I can see if the owners work hard or work well. When you go to a well managed company is very boring, all things are made routine and made without effort"

If you work 20 hrs day STOP!! Your work quality/hr is very low, you make your life hell, and your products reflect that. Start learning how to make effective use of your time. There are specialist on that, read books, see videos(eg Even Pagan) learn to avoid distractions, focus like a laser on what brings value to your company(marketing:learn about people necessities ).

Harj• 17 years ago

this is the same mentality i had while working on my first startup and it's a fallacy. the most productive startup founders i know have activities/interest outside of work and aren't anywhere close to this extreme.

neglecting your health is not a badge of how hard you work. one of my startup investors, chris sacca, recently told me he's weary of founders who don't exercise regularly. exercise is a net gain.

i really urge more people to read this blog post from naval ravikant before launching into endless 14 hour "work" days - http://www.startupboy.com/journal/2005/11/29/the-80-hour-myt...

hwijaya3• 17 years ago

At our first month of start up (not that it's been long anw), we used to work like 17 - 18 hours a day. It doesn't take long for us to realize that this whole thing is more of a marathon than sprint. Since then, i have been trying to adjust my life more.

It's still not balance though. I can relate to that constant thinking and working condition. Often, i got a friend ask me, "so, tomorrow is weekend, what are you going to do?" and my typical answer is "work". Because, when you're doing startup, there is no more weekdays or weekend. For me, everyday is just the same. If i don't sleep due to biological needs, then i work.

Having said all that, now i try to balance the equation a little bit with exercise, socialize with family and friends. After all, most of the time, the "quantum leap" in our business concept are discovered during that "downtime".

Beside, why are we working so hard anyway in the first place? I don't want to lose all my family and friends or key moments in my child's life, while my startup make it. I think this fallacy is well described by Marshall Goldsmith in his book "What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful" about goal obsession. I read it years ago and think it's a great book for most of us here in HN, dare to say, A personality.

mediaman• 17 years ago

My experience in talking with people who have successfully grown startups to medium to large sizes is that they almost universally regret their former belief that the degree to which they worked hard was necessary to get the company to that stage. From my own experience growing a firm from nothing to a profitable low seven figures sales a year, I would agree.

I know that at the beginning I felt that my talent and experience was absolutely vital to the firm's growth. That if I did not put in that extra hour, I was robbing the company of its potential future.

The reality is that I am not that smart and not that talented. Much more important than running around personally implementing everything is growing a group of effective managers who take pride in their work and whom you can trust in running your business.

I think a weakness in many internet businesses (certainly not all of them though) is that because they are so little focused on revenue, it becomes necessary to either (a) try to implement everything yourself, thereby saving labor costs, or (b) spend tons of time raising money (and destroying your ownership in the process), which deducts from time you can spend selecting and growing your managers.

The first time I felt I realized I could leave my company for a week with no cell phone, no BlackBerry, no Internet access, and not be terrified of what would happen -- it was a huge relief, and that was when I began seeing the folly of my ways. It's not about me, it's about my wonderful managers. Working obscene hours is not the way to do that.

Of course, you shouldn't be a slacker either -- people do take cues from you -- but as others have suggested it is far more important to develop your firm's talent than to try to do everything yourself.

xcombinator2• 17 years ago

As Mikhail Gorvachev wrote in his book "Perestroika" the big problem with the Soviet Union was its mentality: "More work=better" "More materials used=better" "More time spent=better" "More effort applied=better"

People cared more about "looking" hard working, that about the actual product itself.

He learned looking at capitalist that naturals were rewarded (people that make some things "effortless"). In communism talented were bad seen.

"Less work doing the same= better"

If something did what it had to do with half the work it was considered twice better, not twice bad.

Look at this, I was in a big company that valued programming work per lines of code written!!. This is like valuing the worth of a plane by weight in direct proportion.If my code works with ten time less code,its really much better.

The Unintended Consequences of Startups - Docstoc CEO

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