I (personally) think there is a significant difference between a founder of an early-stage startup and employees.<p>The best equivalent is parents of a newborn. Do you get to not feed your baby to preserve work&#x2F;life balance? No, because its survival depends on you. You do whatever it takes. That doesn&#x27;t always mean working 80+ hours per week. Sometimes it means a vacation to preserve sanity, but there is a certain bar (and a high one, at that) for being a good parent.<p>Once things stable out, you can start to diversify your life. But until then, there are so many things constantly going wrong or unknown.<p>That may be an unnecessary pressure I put on myself, but my bar for starting a company is &quot;all in.&quot; It&#x27;s just too hard, with too small of a likelihood of success, to waste time half&#x2F;90%-assing.