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Ask HN: As a founder how does your weekends look like?

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Re: Ask HN: As a founder how does your weekends look like?

#11

Post by atmosx »

shopinterest wrote: post #9

Uhhhh, the usual, restless sleep, wake up at 7am, check email, check bank account balance, silent panic, cold sweats, yesterday's coffee, 2 days ago Pizza, a few dozen rejection emails from assorted VCs and angels, listen to cofounder latest complaints against team he hand picked and trained himself, checks site, checks google analytics, one transaction, a faint smile, a hope of a better future, an attack of naivete,…

For something everyone is aiming at, sounds terrible. Do you at least get the girl or something in the end?

Re: Ask HN: As a founder how does your weekends look like?

#13

Post by Tomte »

tptacek wrote: post #12

Like a normal person's weekend.

How was it at your first startup? Different, I guess?

If so, do you think your "normal weekend" is mostly related to one of the following points, all of them, or something else entirely?

a) wealthy enough, not needing to make it work to put food on the table

b) old enough to have priorities shifted

c) easier circumstances (like reputation, network of colleagues etc.)

Re: Ask HN: As a founder how does your weekends look like?

#14

Post by tptacek »

Tomte wrote: post #13
tptacek wrote: post #12

Like a normal person's weekend.

How was it at your first startup? Different, I guess? If so, do you think your "normal weekend" is mostly related to one of the following points, all of them, or something else entirely? a) wealthy enough, not needing to make it work to put food on the table b) old enough to have priorities shifted c) easier circumstances (like reputation, network of colleagues etc.)

Depending on how you count, I'm on my 5th or 6th startup, starting from 1996. Of the previous 4-5 (ie, not including Starfighter), all but one had good exits; three of them grossed me a pretty substantial amount of money.

Only one of those companies demanded my evenings and weekends; it did so because I was a cofounder and I let it do that. And it's the one that failed catastrophically.

2 startups back for me is Arbor Networks, which I joined in 2001, and which was acquired in 2010 for a very large amount of money (it had hundreds of employees at the time). I was hired to take over as lead dev from Dug Song on their flagship product, which at the time (a) had no major customers and (b) was locked in an intense dogfight with two other well-funded competitors with the same small set of customer prospects.

I worked one weekend. Arbor got a deal to monitor the South Korean Winter Olympics for DDoS attacks and the engineering team took shifts managing the deployment. A big deal was made over the fact that we were being asked to do that.

(I later switched from dev to product management, and my schedule got grueling; in particular, I had the worst travel burden of my career. But I asked for that.)

No. I don't think I have normal weekends because I'm wealthy enough to thumb my nose at the startup lifestyle. I thumb my nose at that lifestyle because it is moronic and doesn't work.

Re: Ask HN: As a founder how does your weekends look like?

#15

Post by Tomte »

tptacek wrote: post #14
Tomte wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it at your first startup? Different, I guess? If so, do you think your "normal weekend" is mostly related to one of the following points, all of them, or something else entirely? a) wealthy enough, not needing to make it work to put food on the table b) old enough to have priorities shifted c) easier circumstances (like reputation, network of colleagues etc.)

Depending on how you count, I'm on my 5th or 6th startup, starting from 1996. Of the previous 4-5 (ie, not including Starfighter), all but one had good exits; three of them grossed me a pretty substantial amount of money. Only one of those companies demanded my evenings and weekends; it did so because I was a cofounder and I let it do that. And it's the one that failed catastrophically. 2 startups back for me is Arbo…

Thanks! I knew you had more than Matasano under your belt, but not how many.

I'm still doubtful if startups can generally work with "sensible hours". It's probably one of the big reasons why I never thought about joining one (besides that it's still unusual in Germany).

Re: Ask HN: As a founder how does your weekends look like?

#16

Post by cpncrunch »

semicolondev wrote: post #8
cpncrunch wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My situation is similar. 18-year old company. At weekends I check email occasionally, but don't reply until Monday unless it's an urgent issue (which it generally isn't). There generally should never any need to do any work on weekends unless it's an unusual situation. You're just reducing your overall productivity if you work too much. Having said that, sometimes I do work on problems over the weekend just for the f…

Emails are very tempting. I am on the same boat but, I have been working with a remote team and usually happen to work a lot during weekends because of timezone issues. Working with 5 year old company (remote), bootstraped and I recently moved to Bay Area. Was wondering how it goes with other founders here. Thanks for writing.

For me it is mostly support, so it tends to be questions like "how do I do this thing that is explained in the FAQ that I didn't read"?

If it was questions from colleagues then I might reply, although it would probably depend on the situation, and I certainly wouldn't want there to be an expectation that I would reply quickly to any and all emails. (I don't have any colleagues, so it's not an issue for me :)

Re: Ask HN: As a founder how does your weekends look like?

#17

Post by tixocloud »

tptacek wrote: post #14
Tomte wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it at your first startup? Different, I guess? If so, do you think your "normal weekend" is mostly related to one of the following points, all of them, or something else entirely? a) wealthy enough, not needing to make it work to put food on the table b) old enough to have priorities shifted c) easier circumstances (like reputation, network of colleagues etc.)

Depending on how you count, I'm on my 5th or 6th startup, starting from 1996. Of the previous 4-5 (ie, not including Starfighter), all but one had good exits; three of them grossed me a pretty substantial amount of money. Only one of those companies demanded my evenings and weekends; it did so because I was a cofounder and I let it do that. And it's the one that failed catastrophically. 2 startups back for me is Arbo…

Thanks for sharing. Were you ever in a situation where you had to bootstrap while working fulltime?

I'm a great supporter of the lifestyle that we shouldn't have to work and am trying to figure it all out.

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