
Ask HN: Founders, how much time do you spend on your startup per week? - pstrazzulla
I had a conversation with a friend who said they worked 12 hrs&#x2F;week on their company when they were raising money, he was too depressed dealing with a lot of rejection to do more than that.  Three years later got an offer to sell the company for $250 mm, which he turned down.  He was a lot more productive after he finished the fundraising :)<p>I find myself in the office working on my bootstrapped internet business around 45 hours per week, putting in another 1-2 hrs&#x2F;day at home, a few hours on the weekends, all of which adds up to 8-12 hours of &quot;deep work&quot; per week given the emails&#x2F;calls I have to do.<p>I&#x27;m curious how much time other founders dedicate to their startup, along with how much time they spend on &quot;deep work&quot; in the course of a week.
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jasonkester
Most weeks (especially during climbing season or when travelling} I spend
maybe 2 hours in total doing customer support and keeping things running. I
can ramp that down to zero for a while if necessary, without much in the way
of consequences.

That’s by design, since the entire goal operation was to maximise my free
time.

When I’m building out a new feature (and when building the thing in the first
place) I’ll sometimes push up closer to 20 hour weeks.

As one could imagine, I’ve never got behind this concept that building a
product should involve 80 hour weeks and burning down your life until the day
somewhere down the road when you “make it”. Life needs to happen while you’re
living it, and happily I’ve found that one can build a profitable software
business by launching early and building at a comfortable pace.

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highhedgehog
Do you by chance need a business parter (aka me?)? Think about it! You could
cut down the hours you spend in half, and at the same time earn a climbing
partner!

It's a win-win for both of us!

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vinrob92
Running ManyPixels, mostly doing Sales/Management/Culture/Hiring -- I divide
my time in 2-3 blocks of 2 hours per day on each and leave a lot of time on
weekend to think about the bigger picture. This could be considered as work.

I use my calendar a lot and every morning I start with 2 hours of sales and it
built me a habit, and I become more efficient at doing it.

I would say on average 40 hours per week.

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pstrazzulla
Thanks for sharing, I like the structure.

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sixQuarks
I spend 30 minutes per week on my solo “lifestyle biz” (minutes, not hours).
Built up a large target audience over 10 years working at most 20 hours per
week. now I’m coasting, doing $500k profit/year. You don’t have to kill
yourself to do well. I don’t know how to code either, it’s been mostly through
content marketing and lead generation.

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pstrazzulla
How did you build the audience?

What sort of biz is it?

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slap_shot
60-70 hrs/week. Typical 9-5 with a few hours each night and some long
stretches on Saturday/Sunday.

I'm all in favor of work/life balance, but, in my experience, an early stage
founder simply can't give less. Markets move too quickly and there's too much
to be done.

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amirathi
I am a solo bootstrapped founder (like yourself) and RescueTime consistently
shows 45 to 50 hours per week.

I strongly believe WHAT I do in those ~50 hours is much much more important
than squeezing in another 10-20 hours per week.

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pstrazzulla
Completely agree. You can work 80 hours and get less done than an efficient
person doing 40.

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rcharpentier
Somewhere between 30-60 hours per week on my startup, on top of my regular
9-5. I'm a solo founder/dev so working on the site takes up a lot of my time.

