Well, that depends. For those of us doing the "bootstrap while working a dayjob" thing, yeah, it basically does become a nonstop grind. Well, nearly nonstop. Everybody has to take a break sometime.

For me, I allocate damn close to every hour I have outside of my dayjob to working on Fogbeam Labs. Take out sleep time, and time to eat (plus occasional diversions like grocery shopping, etc.) and it's basically:

1. get up and go to the dayjob

2. leave the dayjob and drive to Starbucks or Panera Bread

3. sit there and work on the startup for 4-5 more hours

4. drive home, eat, sleep

5. lather rinse repeat

6. Except Sat. and Sun, which is pretty much:

7. work on the startup all day

Fun? In some ways yes, in some ways no. Healthy? Probably not. Necessary? Well, I think so or I wouldn't be doing it.

My cofounder, on the other hand, doesn't go to quite the same extremes I do, which is fine. I tend to be a little extreme by nature, and I don't really expect anybody else to do the crazy shit I do. :-)