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Comment by Kaedon | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to think about what can happen after the collapse of a startup, particularly when we tend to give so much of ourselves to the process. I think it's inherently a regenerative process, though. A company may disappear but the lessons stick with you. I'd guess it's not easier but perhaps more familiar the next go around. That's comforting.

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One lesson that can be learned is to give less of yourself to a startup until they prove their worth, and that they're worth it.

I guarantee you that people who avoid working hard at their startups will never have any success that tempts them to work harder.

It depends. There's working 'hard' (maximum hours, maximum effort, maximum stress, etc.) and there's working smart.

There's no point working hard if you're not working smart; if your priorities are wrong, you're trying to do too much, or ultimately, you're pouring your heart and soul into a business that just isn't viable.

By "hard," do you mean 80hrs a week for half-price?

The argument could be made that giving as much of yourself as possible is a crucial ingredient to making the startup worth it. After all if you are holding back the product and business isn't building itself.

Of course it probably isn't healthy to make a business the center of your life, but people who do will likely have a higher chance of success in that business because they are willing to put forth a lot more effort to keep it going than someone who isn't as committed, and therefore not as concerned if the business fails.

Of course it probably isn't healthy to make a business the center of your life

If you don't, though, you will likely be outcompeted by those who do.

It's a simple, obvious truth, not a value judgement.

Are you really being outcompeted if the startup winds up going basically nowhere and you've put a year or two of huge time and opportunity costs into a failure? What if startups weren't worth it unless they were well-run enough to require very few hours over 40 from its employees?

What if startups weren't worth it unless they were well-run enough to require very few hours over 40 from its employees

Are we talking about employees, or founders?

I'm talking about well-run startups.

Oh, OK. I guess I haven't known any of those.

It's a falsehood that appears intuitively obvious. Working stupid hours destroys not only your productivity and personal life but also your judgment, to the extent that you lose the ability to judge your degree of cognitive impairment. It's like coming into work blind drunk: not only are you a liability to yourself and others but you don't realize how much of a liability you are. You may well end up being outcompeted by someone who put in forty hours a week of smart, correctly applied work.

I didn't say anything about "working stupid hours," did I? However:

You may well end up being outcompeted by someone who put in forty hours a week of smart, correctly applied work.

Let me know when that actually happens.

A company may disappear but the lessons stick with you.

That's what I think a lot of people miss. Most young professionals lose tens of thousands of dollars and spend several of the most productive years of their lives learning these lessons. Except they refer to the experience as "college," not "entrepreneurship."

Either way, education costs money, and the only question we all have to ask ourselves is, how much do we want to learn? We go to "school," then we graduate and move on.

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