Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9751377

by thrwAwayQues • 11 years ago

45 57 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hi HN, I left a job at a respectable corporation to join a YC startup that had raised capital to build out the team and execute their vision. The lead founder of the company sends emails at all hours of the night, even 3 or 4AM and talks about how little sleep he is getting like it is a badge of honor. I have worked at several other companies with extremely effective coworkers, and have never seen this type of behavior before.

I am concerned that he is too tired to make decisions effectively and may be making cognitive errors. I have no evidence that this is taking place so far, except some small errors here and there, but where there is smoke there is fire right? I’m usually a pretty direct guy, but I have ruled out talking to him about it because I do not think there is a way to make the conversation productive.

What I am asking is:

Is it normal for founders to send emails at random times all night to the team (most nights)? If it is not normal, have others experience founders that did that and am I overreacting? Are there any examples of people who are successful who exhibit this behavior and are those simply antidotes? Is anyone aware of whether this is a good or bad sign?

Retra• 11 years ago

Some people can go on very little sleep. Bragging about it is immature, but it isn't a sign that something is wrong by itself.

thrwAwayQues• 11 years ago

Sometimes it comes up and he talks about getting no sleep like everyone should be doing it. It is not aggressive, but maybe passive aggressive? I'm not even really sure, but it definitely makes me uncomfortable. Maybe this is my real concern with it?

karissa3• 11 years ago

Yes, this seems like the most important, and most detrimental part of this behavior. I'd recommend getting a new job -- it'll only get worse as the company gets older and more stress is added.

automathematics• 11 years ago

Ignoring the "bragging" part, yeah it's normal.

You are joining a startup. To you it's just a great opportunity at a job that seemed interesting to you. To the founder, it's his life. At 2:30am you might be leaving the bar thinking about whether to call an Uber or a Lyft. Your founders are probably awake thinking about how they're going to get that new feature out the door.

I started my own startup a little over 2 years ago. It's pretty normal every night between 2 and 5am for one of the three founders to send a message to another about something they're freaking out about.

He's not thinking "Oh it's 3am, I shouldn't email my employee this late". He's thinking "There's something on my mind about my company and I need to get it off my chest".

If you start your own company and get a few employees it makes a lot more sense VERY quickly.

Don't worry, he/she's just very invested.

7Figures2Commas4• 11 years ago

Even if one is generous and assumes this kind of behavior is typically well-intentioned, it's foolish to believe that it won't become a detriment as you grow your business.

A lot of startup founders don't think much about management principles and the importance of perception in an organization, but these things matter. When founders are emailing around the clock, many employees will come away with the perception that they're expected to be available at all hours of the day and night too. Your employees are never going to be as invested as you, so this typically creates stress and dissatisfaction for employees more than it motivates and impresses them.

As this Ask HN post demonstrates, a workaholic warrior complex is also a great way to convince your employees that you're an "i" word (insane, insensitive, imbalanced, incompetent, etc.).

volaski4• 11 years ago

One of the biggest mistakes I made while working on a past startup was listening to an advice like this. What you say is totally valid if your company is a fortune 500 company, but the type of people who start companies shouldn't strive to become those types of managers covered in business case studies. I made this mistake after reading too many business books.

It simply doesn't work. From my experience it fucks up the company culture when a founder tries to "tone it down", because that's not the quality required to make stuff happen when it's in the beginning stage.

A competent founder should be able to adapt as the company grows, but shouldn't behave like a fortune 500 CEO from the beginning.

jmount• 11 years ago

Not normal, not effective, probably leads to paranoia (so watch your back).

brobdingnagian• 11 years ago

Not getting enough sleep is very unhealthy. Additionally, there is no evidence that all of the micromanagement going on in the wee hours leads to business success.

Gatsky2• 11 years ago

I think that people greatly overestimate the productivity gained by sacrificing sleep. For intellectually taxing work I think it is probably detrimental overall, particularly if chronically sleep derived. Lots of high profile successful people say the don't sleep, but this may largely reflect their exceptional drive and dedication, rather than any real benefits.

The second thing to consider is the use of stimulants like modafinil, apparently quite common in the startup community.

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

There can be considerable productivity gained, for very short windows of time. It's all "tortoise and the hare". If you have something due at 7AM, sprint. If it's due in three months, pace yourself and optimize average productivity, which usually means balancing working hours against sleep, exercise, relaxation, socialization, and food.

karissa3• 11 years ago

don't take that shit.

Gatsky2• 11 years ago

Just to clarify, I meant that the founder might be using such drugs, not that the OP should start using them!

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

I've used modafinil for personal 96 hour sprints, and while it works, I can't even describe the nightmares I had during the 18 hours I'd then sleep.

Would not use again unless my life depended on it.

7Figures2Commas4• 11 years ago

Is it normal for founders to send emails at random times all night to the team (most nights)?

In my opinion, this question is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is how the founder's behavior makes you feel.

You say that you have worked with people who are extremely effective but never seen similar behavior. You say you are concerned that the founder is too tired and may be exhibiting poor decision-making. And, perhaps most importantly, you don't feel comfortable broaching the subject with him.

It appears your gut is telling you that something is off here. When it comes to where you invest your time professionally, you can usually do far worse than to follow your intuition.

curiously2• 11 years ago

Just because you are now working on an idea that bunch of people with the sole intention of maximizing their returns on their investment shouldn't change the way you function as a normal human being although I'm more worried about this excerpt:

"The lead founder of the company sends emails at all hours of the night, even 3 or 4AM and talks about how little sleep he is getting like it is a badge of honor."

and seeing how it connected to your original posting:

    "Hi HN, I left a job at a respectable corporation to 
    join a YC startup "

I don't get it. YC doesn't guarantee success. From what I read, YC gets the pick of the litter, the rejects either raise money from others or bootstrap or just go back to the workforce. The same thing happens even if you are in YC...

You made a decision to leave a stable job to join a YC startup. You realize the founder is not letting you sleep or has some weird ego about being poorly productive (no sleep means you aren't performing 100%), and now you are questioning if you made the right choice, and it seems like you have every right to question your decision based on the environment you are currently in.

A normal and healthy working environment (YC or being a startup is no excuse) doesn't have people sending emails at 4AM and expecting people to read their bragging rights on how shitty their work output will be throughout tomorrow because they didn't sleep. IF I WAS AN INVESTOR AND THIS IS HOW PEOPLE WERE BURNING MY MONEY I WOULD BE FUCKING LIVID AND IMMEDIATELY FIRE WHOEVER IS RUNNING YOUR COMPANY.

hkarthik• 11 years ago

It's not "normal", but it's quite common among startup founders. I think this says more about VC backed startup culture and the personality types that it attracts, than anything inherently wrong with an individual.

The personal sacrifices and risks that founders take on likely changes their personalities and behavior. Once they enter this feedback loop of sleep deprivation, extreme work ethic, and dedication to their startup above all else, it's quite difficult for them to get out of it. And the longer they stay in it, the more likely that things will end badly for them.

The worst part is that these individuals are the least likely to listen to reason and get help.

bluecalm• 11 years ago

Them sending emails at random times might be just their sleeping/working schedule as well as habit to send emails instantly when they see an issue when working on something.

I have this habit and my sleeping schedule sometimes gets shaky. I am also a founder of a small start-up so all this sounds like me (expect maybe badge of honor thing as I see messed up sleeping schedule as a problem not a thing to brag about). I think that as along is it's understood that those emails are not urgent to respond (or even read) and are there as just "things to look at once you have time" it's all good.

I think it's good to clarify their position on it and what their expectations are for you reacting to those emails.

te_chris• 11 years ago

I'd cut and run while you can. Sure, some people love this shit, but leave that to them, there's likely other opportunities out there for you.

jacquesm• 11 years ago

Being unable to sleep is terrible especially when it happens over a longer period of time. I've had this during years when ww.com was going through the .com boom and subsequent bust and only since I finally sold it has this changed and I sleep like a baby now. The stress has to go somewhere I guess.

jerf• 11 years ago

Something I haven't seen anyone ask yet... are you expected to answer? It's one thing for some bits to flip in a mail server at 3am... it's quite another if your phone is buzzing and your job is (cumulatively) on the line if you're not responding.

There's a non-zero chance that the person sending these emails will read this message. There's a very high chance that someone matching the description will read this message, since there's definitely not enough info in the Ask HN here to uniquely identify anyone :)

So, as not a startup founder and likely never will be one, I implore you founders to remember that we are not founders, and you can't expect the rest of us to act like founders without the possible upside. Further, I'd suggest that you should want your first few employees to sleep well, so that they can provide a well-rested analysis of whatever crazy thoughts you had at 3am when you've had 10 hours of sleep in the last four days. That's actually a good thing, something you should seek out, cherish, and listen to.

fsk• 11 years ago

Is he expecting you to answer at 3am?

If he expects you to answer at 3am, it's time to find a new job.

If he's willing to wait to get an answer, then don't worry about it.

I turn of the sound and vibrate on my phone, so I don't get interrupted while I'm sleeping.

He's probably just trying to show off about how dedicated he is. Don't get tricked into overworking yourself to match him.

dennisgorelik2• 11 years ago

trying to show off about how dedicated

No.

It's just asynchronous communication in the most speedy way: email as soon as you come up with an idea/solution.

ne01• 11 years ago

to accomplish more, you need to work smarter not just harder. I suggest one of my favorite books: "Rework" to your friend.

volaski4• 11 years ago

I just want to say here, if you are a founder (or THE founder mentioned here) who works hard to the point where other people thinks you're crazy, you are NOT crazy and you are NOT wrong. I am not saying you should completely get rid of rest from your life (because otherwise you will burn out), but working hard on something you believe in and being abnormally passionate about it is nothing to be ashamed of.

To OP: It's not a question of whether it is normal or not. Every startup is different. Sure, there are some mildly successful companies with founders who have "work-life balance", but the ones that are unusually successful normally have founders who are unusually obsessive.

saryant• 11 years ago

The richest man in history, John D. Rockefeller, kept to a strict schedule including 7.5 hours of sleep a night and ample personal time in the morning and evening.

Somehow he still managed to accrue $660 billion (inflation-adjusted).

prawn• 11 years ago

I work late and send emails at whatever hour it happens to be. If I email a client or employee at 3am, I don't expect them to reply then, but that they'll get to it when they are the office in the morning. I am just trying to get that item out of my queue right then so I can move onto the next thing.

Every recipient is in control of the notifications on their phone and can switch them off overnight.

It sounds like you have a different issue with this individual, assuming they're making sleep-deprived errors and reading too much into this? If they were calling you at that hour repeatedly, then that would be a different story but email is more akin to snail mail - the recipient opens it when they choose to open it.

dennisgorelik2• 11 years ago

Exactly.

I'm surprised that many commentators here imply that email sent at 3am demands immediate reply.

alaskamiller• 11 years ago

1. Just cause he can send an email at 3AM doesn't mean he wants a response at 3AM

2. Just cause he can stay up for a long time cause he's young and have no other responsibilities doesn't make him any better than anyone else.

3. Playing at tech startups is just playing a video game. Some people get obsessive over it and some people do it casually and most everyone else is in between those two extremes.

myhf• 11 years ago

Staying up until 3 doesn't mean never sleeping. Plenty of people operate on a delayed sleep phase because they are more comfortable doing certain types of work at night. At some stages in a company's growth, hacking is more important that taking 9am meetings. That's not true at all stages, but changing gears takes time.

devanti• 11 years ago

Don't worry about it.

He's trying to motivate his employees by showing his dedication. If he wants to work in the middle of the night, let him do so. It's normal for startup founders to work late or wake up in the middle of the night with random thoughts.

I highly doubt you're expected to respond to it immediately anyway.

Also, it's not really your job to worry about his cognitive capabilities. That's his responsibility, and some people can get away with less sleep than others.

If you don't trust in his ability and the future of the startup, then you should simply leave the company.

jeffmould• 11 years ago

While not "normal" by the true definition, it can be somewhat normal in the startup world. Healthy is a different story and being productive is another question. What you don't know on the flip side is his exact sleep habits which you could be missing altogether. There are some people that nap and work in spurts of time. I have horrible sleep habits sometimes and if I am stressed I can have insomnia at times. But as an example, I used to get up at 3am work until 5 or 6am, take an hour nap, go to the gym for an hour, and then off to work. I would stop working around 5pm come home eat, relax, do housework, whatever else and take a nap until about 10pm. Then get up work till midnight and back to sleep. I found I was much more relaxed and had a ton more energy sleeping in small cycles like that. I also found myself sleeping in cycles on weekends even more. I would work 3-4 hours, nap an hour or two, work 3-4 hours, nap again, and over and over. What works sleep wise for one person may not work for the next, so it is hard to answer your question precisely.

As a side story, the first startup I worked for back in the late 90s during the first bubble the CEO was older and well respected among Internet companies. He had just come off the CEO position at one of the biggest data center companies of the time and was well connected. One day not long after I started I had an idea for the company and randomly emailed him at like 10pm. He responded around 3 or 4am. I was working night shift in the data center and emailed him right back (part with a sense of surprise that he answered me and part with a sense of surprise that it was that early in the morning). Long story short, it ended up becoming an open line of communication between us that if I had a question or needed something I would just email him at 3am and usually have an answer within minutes.

As for the other part regarding the bragging, I would just take that in strides. That's just part immaturity and part probably trying to make co-workers feel guilty for only working 10 hours instead of 11 each day. I think it also comes from the accelerator mentality of grind, grind, grind to have a demo product in a short period of time.

Regardless I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you start seeing problems such as him demanding employees do the same (i.e. expecting you to respond to emails at 3am) or having short temper with employees. I wouldn't worry about the little errors either. It is a startup there are going to be missteps along the way. Most likely his sleep habits will change over time as the company gets it feet well planted.

MyNameIsMK• 11 years ago

I have been operating at 3-4 hours sleep for over 2 years. Its not normal, it's obsessive and ridiculous. With that said, you know the person is self-motivated, and disciplined to get the shit done.

Surround yourself with these guys. You'll get far.

braindead_in• 11 years ago

Not getting is never good a good sign. But the assumption that you can send emails only while awake is wrong as well.

TheOtherHobbes• 11 years ago

I've sent emails half asleep.

Mistake. Big mistake.

Anyway - there is rock-solid scientific evidence to suggest that sleep deprivation damages cognitive abilities and decision making.

See e.g.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/

Depriving yourself of sleep is false heroism. You do not "get more done." All you're doing is increasing internal friction, decreasing personal effectiveness, and making yourself cranky and stupid.

foltz• 11 years ago

Does anyone know of an email client or plugin that acts like Buffer? Something that would allow you to add these midnight missives to a queue for dispatch at a sane hour? You should be able to skip the queue for emergencies but those should really be handled with phone calls or texts.

vnchr• 11 years ago

Email scheduling with Boomerang (gmail plugin) or something similar

mrchess• 11 years ago

To me it's normal. When I obsess over things I get very little sleep. But to brag about it, to me, is immature. It reminds me of college kids who would brag about waiting last minute to study and pulling all nighters for their tests the day before and being proud of it. Well... if you were more responsible with your time maybe you wouldn't have to cram like that?

To answer your question, yeah it's normal to send things at odd hours, but immature to constantly talk about it as if you deserve some sort of special treatment for it.

hawkice• 11 years ago

When someone brags about how little sleep they get, I've found it difficult to convince them that extreme sleep deprivation impacts performance. It's not too dissimilar to a drunk friend trying to negotiate back their car keys -- introducing ludicrous levels of denial seem to be part of the mentally-impaired package.

Perhaps a bigger warning sign is when / if a founder like that ends up using and abusing amphetamines. I used to work at a startup where the VCs did a clawback due to the founders erratic, amphetamine-induced behavior.

Either way, a simple observation: you will be most effective when you trust the judgment of the person you work for. I highly recommend optimizing for how effective you are when considering where you work.

wpietri2• 11 years ago

My personal experience (started 5 companies, 20+ years in tech, 15 of those in SF) is that you are right to worry, but only modestly so unless things get worse.

The best people I've worked with take care of themselves. The worst let the pressure of the situation get to them and burn themselves out. I saw one company totally destroyed by a CEO who sent out a poorly considered "let's reorg the company" email at 2 am after the company Christmas party. Many times I've seen whole teams working stupid hours and ending up making stupid mistakes, or doing the startup equivalent of "controlled flight into terrain"[1]. The worst gig I ever had was at a company where people celebrated "heroic" efforts, because it created a strong incentive to let problems pile up until they could only be resolved through heroic efforts. Macho bullshit is certainly fun and entertaining for a while, but it's a terrible foundation for a serious company.

I know a lot of people who are second- or third-time founders, and a common conversational theme is that the biggest thing they're doing differently is aiming for a sustainable pace. The common line is "it's not a sprint, it's a marathon", but I think even that comparison falls short. A lot of people run exactly one marathon because they train too hard and burn out. Median time-to-exit is something like 6 years, so we aren't talking one race, we're talking about marathon after marathon after marathon. It's not a sprint, it's a running career.

Hopefully this guy can pull it together, so in your shoes I'd call this a yellow flag. But I would work hard to make sure the behavior doesn't spread to the engineering team. Tired programmers make dumb mistakes and then preserve them forever in source control. They will lurk there and spring upon you at the worst possible times, eating up far more time than was ever apparently created by working late.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_flight_into_terrain

xynny• 11 years ago

Nope it's not normal. This is the behavior of a socialpath/psychopath. I highly recommend reading this:

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...

dudul• 11 years ago

Not normal. Not healthy. Not effective.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was this guy's first venture.

xivzgrev• 11 years ago

Show me a founder who sends emails regularly at 3am, and I'll show you someone who is scared and as result focused exclusively on short term. If your competitive advantage is working 20 hour days, you don't have much of an advantage.

saluki• 11 years ago

I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I find myself up at 4 am some mornings working, putting together emails, especially if it's something exciting or on my mind. If he only requires 6 hours of sleep he might be turning in at 10pm and up at 4am.

Or sometimes I find myself up for an hour or two around 3 or 4 am and then go back to bed after clearing my mind, finishing up some code, sending some emails, making notes about an idea.

So I wouldn't worry too much about when he's up emailing thinking about his business.

But you definitely are only productive 8-12 hours per day tops, maybe less. But being excited about something can result in getting an early start or being up an hour or two in the middle of the night.

If you notice he's exhausted, making lots of mistakes then think about asking him if he's getting enough sleep or wants to take the afternoon off.

aburan28• 11 years ago

If your sleeping well your startup is doing something wrong. This behaviour is to be expected when competing as a startup

mmuelly• 11 years ago

First you have to define normal, it certainly isn't normal by the standards of the rest of society. Many of the successful startup founders are along the bipolar spectrum, some without even realizing it, and most productive when in a hypomanic state. This allows them to sleep very little and be especially creative. Hypomania has produced some of the greatest creative works in human history so this is not necessarily a bad thing. However, the danger arises when hypomania becomes mania and the person becomes delusional and actions start to not make sense anymore. The problem for an outsider is recognizing when the line to irrational is crossed and getting the person help. Also, every positive feedback loop, like little sleep, is eventually followed by hysteresis and a crash.

Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

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