I was co-founder of a (YC-backed) startup for 4 years until we were forced to close, so I don't know if you can define us as "successful".<p>Anecdotally speaking, I started off working with no life. There is a lot to be said for time periods where you shut out all else and just focus on your business, in fact the YC programme gave good impetus to only "write code, speak to customers or exercise". However doing this for extended periods is a great way to burn out.<p>Initially any time I took off I felt incredibly guilty about. I however came to the realisation that stepping away, even just for an evening to see friends, allowed me to recharge my batteries and I was able to recoup the lost time and then some.<p>A company is only really the sum of its people, and if those people aren't firing on all cylinders then it will become apparent. In short, lead a balanced life.
Just read this and I think it matches quite well: <a href="http://plumshell.com/2016/03/10/work-for-only-3-hours-a-day-but-everyday/" rel="nofollow">http://plumshell.com/2016/03/10/work-for-only-3-hours-a-day-...</a><p>We are running our business for ~3yrs now and just realized in the last few months that none of the all-nighters or skipped holidays actually made a difference in the end. So just from my personal experience I'd say you should actively plan and maintain a private life from the get-go - If you don't you are not "better" then another person who is just working to finally reach retirement...
There aren't any rules. You can have a life outside of your startup if you want one. Plenty of people do.<p>The reasons <i>why</i> people say you can't have one are two-fold. There's a very good, very valid reason, and there's a very bad, toxic-to-your-business reason.<p>The bad reason is that people who start companies are <i>very</i> competitive. This means they feel they have to be seen doing <i>more</i>, whether it's working longer hours, making more calls, writing more code, going to more networking events, and so on. Sometimes this produces value for their business, but more often it's just "busy work" that isn't actually adding anything useful - going to a networking event and only talking to people you already know is a good example. People who do that sort of thing are the ones who brag about putting in 80 hours a week. Don't emulate those founders.<p>The good reason to cast your life aside is that very often a startup is doing something ambitious that takes a lot of work to get off the ground, but only has funding to last 6 months. Consequently <i>everything</i> has to be done in that time, which leads to putting in loooooong days. If you have a low burn rate and a long time you can afford to go slowly.<p>If you take an honest look at the hours people are putting in and realise that half of it could have been done better, or automated away, or just not have been done in the first place, then you'll understand why "number of hours worked" is a pretty awful measure of effort.
Define "successful startup"?<p>Countless of people have started small and stayed small. I think it always been like that traditionally. You start a business, you grow it till its big enough to serve your niche market, and you pull in few million every year for the rest of your career life without much effort.<p>I used to work in manufacturing industry and this model is more prevalent in their whole supply chain. You could own 1 factory with less than 20 staff, producing 1 type of component(bolt/glue/bracket etc) and be done with it.<p>However, if you define successful startup, as multi-million dollar revenue organization, that's another story.
I think there's a saying in this community - work on a startup that a few people really want, rather than something a lot of people kinda want a little.<p>That would also apply to having a "life". Live your life in a way that a few people will greatly love you and miss you. Rather than spend time with a lot of people who kinda enjoy your company a little.<p>There's certainly enough time in an early stage startup to treat your closest people well. I have a great lunch with my wife all the time. I bathe my daughter, play bubbles, and dance with her. I mentor young entrepreneurs.<p>Do things that people will remember you for after you're dead. Or at least the things they'll remember 5 years from now.
Short answer: it depends on your personality and the type of startup.<p>Long answer:
My startup (founded in 2000, sold in 2014, still going strong) took a huge toll on my personal life, but it was a 24/7 operation (a website), I was both CEO and lead programmer/CTO and I'm terrible at delegating work and inspiring responsibility in people. Also, web technologies did tend to fall apart more easily back then and my experience with that was limited.<p>In hindsight, all of these factors contributed to the (largely unnecessary) 100-hour-weeks I pulled in the first couple of years. So, brief advice: if your startup is a 24/7 operation (it doesn't have to be, there's plenty of other opportunities), you will likely be putting out fires around the clock. If you can, hire reliable people early on who can do this for you and put your mind at ease. You will be thinking about your startup a lot either way, but you can surely do that while enjoying your weekend trips or whatever.
Well there is nothing glamorous about startups. It might seem this way initially, with fixie bikes hanged on exposed brick walls, and programmers somehow managing peak states in a noisy open plan office. (They should be hermetically sealed off). Employees apparently multitasking to look busy...Multitasking is an illusion propagated by the media, and it's actually impossible to multitask without performance suffering. Also see: banning mobile phone use whilst driving. A more ample question is: "must you have a life to...". It starts making sense when the natural rhythm of your own life is carried on into the startup. Ottherwise you're falling victim of the great illusion of startup glamour...
I'm building something at the moment. I previously worked at a couple startups and a large tech company. I'm the kind of person who goes all out until burn out. Not really healthy behaviour. I've realised that building my own thing is a decade long journey and as much as I want things to be done yesterday I cannot forget to live my life. I don't want 10 years to pass by and have missed out on all the other experiences I could be having. It took me a while to figure it out, to spend time reading, go to the gym, meet friends for lunch and even take days off writing code. It really is a marathon and while it's important to be focused the worst thing would be to look back and regret not living.
One thing that improved quality of life was for me to define success. Ask yourself: What do you want?
I wasn't smart enough to come up with that question, it was a friend who asked me point blank. Took me about a year to be able to answer it. But things are now much better and I have a more positive outlook for the future.<p>Businesses come and go. So does money. But you are not eternal. Figure out what you want and then work backwards from the end goal to the present. Set yourself small goals. Be patient. Learn to forgive yourself for mistakes l. And above all, just try to be happy.<p>Must you have no life to run a successful business? No, but you must make sure to have a life. Whether you have a business or not.<p>Best of luck OP!
Probably depends on what you are trying to do.<p>The reality is that if you are a small team trying to take on a huge market and maybe creating new technology while other major companies are trying to so the same then you need to get a better solution into the market faster.<p>So can you do that and also have "a life" however defined?<p>On the other hand if you have some niche of a niche kubernetes plugin for WebGL and are a team of two college students with no overhead. Yes you probably can.
While I can't speak to the successful part, I'm just over two years into my current project and haven't launched nor applied to YC yet.<p>If I had more money I'd definitely maintain way more of a life than I do now while continuing to work on my startup. Granted, I didn't really have much of a life prior anyways (remote job coupled with high expenses), so maybe that makes it easier since I'm used to it.<p>The timescale might seem crazy, but it's incredible what time does for your ideation and strategy. When I first started, my plan was basically a mid-sized SaaS business. Over the years both internal and external forces evolved that into a methodical blueprint for a company on the order of Magic Leap. Six months in I figured out trying to charge money for the product was probably suicide. Six months after that came the start of a radical shift to a far more ambitious plan that built off the original in a very natural way. Had I artificially constrained myself to a fixed time window, or otherwise quit, I'd have never discovered any of that.<p>The whole thing is very much like an obsession, something that occupies virtually all of your idle thought. Kind of like a nagging splinter in your mind's eye where you can see precisely what you want, the only challenge being to make it manifest.<p>Taking a fat paycheck as a software developer and everything that comes with it has always been tempting, especially with hindsight—but I know that the second I do it will be the end of my project. Giving up on that would be unbearable, worse than death—at least until I've seen it through regardless of the outcome.<p>Melodramatic narrative aside, to answer the OP's question—no, I don't think you <i>must</i> have no life to do a startup, and it's even preferable that you have one. For most people, the reality is just that time or financial constraints conspire to ensure that they don't.
When giving or seeking career advice, people want to frame things in terms of absolutes.<p>There are many paths to a successful business. Some successful people sacrificed their families, health, relationships, etc., and others didn't. Some unsuccessful people also sacrificed their lives in pursuit of success.
It's tough. You want to work all day and all night. You think that if you take just a moment away from it that it will falter. Not the case. I started out that way, but I have found that even if you take the time to eat dinner with family, it's that time that helps you recharge and regroup. That is the most important time as it allows you to reflect. Without it, you work tirelessly and arguably are less efficient because you haven't taken the necessary breaks. Your brain can only process so much. Take the breaks. Go get ice cream. Go run. Go lift. Go to a bar. For God's sake, go do something that's not work-related. Then, come back and work. Unless you're drunk, then sleep. Just take time away from it.
If you mean startup in the sense of <i>VC-backed with the goal of maximum growth and market penetration</i>: Probably yes.<p>If you rather want to do your own thing, I always liked the rule of thumb from the book "Start Small Stay Small". Put 100 hours into the product and 100 hours into marketing. You can do this in a month or two and then you'll see if it works or not – and more importantly: You will see if you like working on this thing or not.
You may not realize this but you're asking a question a "true" startup entrepreneur doesn't think to ask.<p>Or to put it another way, a passionate entrepreneur would ask the <i>opposite</i> question in some zen philosophy forum, <i>"Must I spend time away from my startup so I appear to have a balanced life?"</i><p>The true entrepreneurs are <i>obsessed</i> with their startup. They <i>don't want</i> to spend time shooting the breeze drinking beers with their buddies. They <i>don't want</i> to sit still on the beach staring at the ocean. (At least at the early stage, but maybe later when they're Bill Gates' age.) They'd rather program one more feature on that web page. The startup work is not an "obligation". The business startup work is <i>who they are</i>. These types of passionate people are rare and most people really can't relate to the startup founders' focus.<p>The obsession and singular focus on startup work is similar to musicians' obsessions with composition, athletes with sports, etc.<p>Sure, you'll want to hear an answer of <i>"no you don't have to give up your life"</i> and many people will give you that answer but realize that you're competing with entrepreneurs who don't even ask it. The startup <i>is their life</i> and therefore, there is nothing to "give up" when they're working on it all the time.<p>EDIT to the downvoters: can you list examples of "successful startups" as that phrase is understood by the HN readers where the founders work 40 hours per week so they could have a "balanced life" outside of their business? Is there a YC company in the portfolio where founders are working just 40 hours? Did I misunderstand what the poster is asking? Isn't he asking about <i>founders</i> who run the startup and not the line employees?
Define life.<p>You absolutely need to work hard and devote yourself but that doesn't mean you cannot have a <i>life</i>.<p>It might not be the 9-5 "life" all your friends are enjoying but how about sacrificing 5-10 years of hard work building something amazing in exchange for an early retirement while everyone else settles in for next 40-50 years?>