AI Startup Founders Tout a Winning Formula–No Booze, No Sleep, No Fun
67 comments
·September 12, 2025_fat_santa
cjbgkagh
I think there must be a genetic predisposition to burn out as I have noticed many people that should be burning out but do not. My burnout was clearly genetic (hEDS) as is the burnout of everyone I personally know. Looking at the stats of people hospitalized with Covid there appears to be a subset of people who will die before experiencing a level of stress that could induce burnout or even trigger post viral fatigue. My rough estimate is that 50% of the population cannot burn out. It appears to only become chronic burnout in 20% of those that do (10% of general pop) and half of those appear to have ADHD and or generalized joint hyper mobility (GJH) which suggests a strong genetic component to the duration and severity.
That said AI founders are not the general population and there are a few strong selection criteria biases that I think likely favors those who are likely to burn out.
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reaperducer
I noticed there is zero mention of burnout in the article, which is exactly what every one of these founders will get if they keep pushing at the crazy pace they are going at
Or just pretend that you, and the people you ape, aren't taking drugs to keep yourself going.
As much as I dislike a certain high-profile African-American rocket launching car salesman tech bro, at least he doesn't hide his addiction.
Beretta_Vexee
Don't take your health and lifestyle advice from start-up founders, episode 36. Elizabeth Holmes writes the same kind of nonsense.
It's just an attempt to pass themselves off as exceptional beings who owe their success solely to their talent and iron discipline.
I don't know anyone who can keep going in the long term by neglecting their sleep and their physical and mental health.
dbish
Most of these founders are performative. It's like the rash of cringey overproduced startup videos, just meant to try to get eyeballs in a time where sadly startup founders are trying less to be good at tech and more to be cluely-like marketers. I hope to see us get back to people who love tech and building and let those folks move back to different fields.
stego-tech
Gotta promote bootstrapping somehow, because you just know most of these folks won’t see one thin dime from their equity, and those that do will be worshipped as visionaries while conveniently ignoring the piled masses of unsuccessful bodies behind them.
jrs235
Right? Like if one's identity is found in you work and one doesn't step back there's a good chance they think amphetamines are a good thing one should take to stay awake and work more.
oulipo2
100% this
superdude12
Not sleeping is disastrous for productivity. Why would you advertise to your investors, customers, and coworkers that you’re intentionally cognitively impaired?
tempodox
Apparently there are enough investors who take this as a sign of “grit”. They may well be the primary audience for these performative stunts.
Sharlin
It's incredible that we're at a point where people here feel the need to argue – apparently in all seriousness – that sleep and fun are important. As if that was something not self-evident.
And I mean intrinsically, of course, not just as a means to help produce more value for shareholders.
throwaway173738
There were people on here the other day arguing earnestly that women should get jobs and pay for childcare because it would improve their contribution to GDP.
crawfordcomeaux
And arguing over whether or not businesses need to care for employees (while pretending that an argument for a corporate culture of collectivist genuine effective care was somehow an argument for businesses to operate how they already do).
People also quibble on here over what exactly is genocide and should we really be against it.
mrtksn
This sounds like abuse. Give them the money to satisfy their ego, take their lives away and multiply your your wealth?
Then they hate the society, don’t have moral compass and relentlessly keep trying to increase control and resources for even more ego stuff.
Sounds very unhealthy to me. Fits with the observation that numbers are all time high but everyone hates their lives and trying to destroy the system(whatever they perceive it as). Suboptimal practices are better as they leave some life on the table.
code_for_monkey
I am sick to death of founder propaganda like this, none of them actually work this much. 'No Booze' i believe, all of them do psychedelics and designer drugs now anyways. I would love if it a single reporter asked the obvious question in all of this "If the AI is so good, how come you have to work this 20 hour monster days?" the AI is both a mega machine capable of doing every persons job and somehow this doesnt lead to reduced work hours or increased output for anyone? Im not buying it.
thw_9a83c
AI Startup founders have a winning formula: No Booze, No Sleep, No Fun... for their employees.
godsinhisheaven
Cutting alcohol out of my life was one of the best decisions I ever made. Better health and more money in my wallet at the end of the week. But come on you gotta sleep, and you gotta have some fun, call it decompression if you want to be serious about it.
_fat_santa
Archive Link: https://archive.is/LtZFs
abeppu
> Laqua, whose father is a lawyer for an insurance company, said he hires only people willing to work seven days a week. Of his 40-plus employees, around 30 are ex-founders. His welcome gift to new hires is a mattress to keep at work. > “I live at the office,” said Laqua, who considers himself the most hardcore of his peers. Employees share similar feelings. Though not a work requirement, Laqua said, “two-thirds of our early employees got Corgi tattoos.”
How do you get former founders to put in that kind of dedication to _someone else's company_?
Also, are these actually AI companies? By what definition? Corgi's home page appears to be _only_ a list of open positions presently, none of which are ML/AI engineers.
jandrewrogers
> How do you get former founders to put in that kind of dedication to _someone else's company_?
It is common for people to call themselves "founders" because they vibe-coded an app over the weekend and sometimes just because they have an idea for an app. Like an aspirational lifestyle thing. I suspect that is the kind of "founder" we are talking about here.
non_aligned
I worked crazy hours in my early 20s because I liked it. I liked computers, I liked my team, and to be frank, I had not much else to do. If I went home early, I would be spending time on the internet anyway.
But the thing is, unless you're building your own business, it just doesn't matter. No one will remember this in five years. In a corporate environment, every doc, every line of code you wrote will be replaced or forgotten far sooner than you suspect. Two or three reorgs later, your team might not even exist as a distinct entity. There will be no statue of you in the hallway after you're gone.
It's also not your family. If you become any sort of a liability, if you make an off-color joke, if the revenue metrics are off by 5% - thanks kid, here's the door. The first layoffs you go through will be devastating precisely because they crush that illusion. Yeah, your manager might be a genuinely nice and caring person, but by the end of the day, if they're asked to sort a spreadsheet with your name in it and then draw a line somewhere, they will, and there will be "nothing they could do".
The only lasting thing you're getting out of the heroics is the money you save, the skills you learn on the job, and for a short while, the reference you get from your old boss when you apply for the next job. If you optimize for that, you'll probably have a satisfying career. If you don't, you wake up one day realizing that you've given up a good chunk of your life to make Sam Altman 0.01% richer, and that's that.
If a company is demanding that you sacrifice social life and well-being, ask yourself what's it worth to you. Are they paying more than anyone else? Or do they just want to get more kLOC out of you for free?
chain030
Well said.
The reality is, unless youre working on something that is actually revolutionary and positively going to impact humanity (which is rare I know) - who cares? Many people get wrapped up in their identity for work and its pretty sad. Little do they realise, they play straight into the hands of those who want them to be a productive asset and nothing more.
ripped_britches
I would add “no eating”, who has time for that when you have a founder video to make
geodel
Indeed. Eating is found to be a major cause of wasted billions of hour per day in the world. Can you imagine productivity growth if people just stop eating.
crawfordcomeaux
This is a great argument for a dietary regimen of feasting before a sprint, intermittent fasting during the middle of it, and fasting fully for crunch weeks! I bet it could be so successful, I could start an AI company copying what others do, not changing a thing, and I'll just be so much more productive I'll wind up on top!
geodel
Yeah, I read on Linkedin If camel and survive without food for several months what's stopping you?
Regular eating is for losers, AI startup winners keep battery packs up their arse to keep them going for months without break.
I noticed there is zero mention of burnout in the article, which is exactly what every one of these founders will get if they keep pushing at the crazy pace they are going at, and highlights the problem with this kind of mentality.
Burnout is a bitch, at least in my case it felt like I developed ADHD. Couldn't focus on anything, couldn't remember things that were said at meetings. I managed to pull back and now things are fine but had I not I probably would have been fired from my job.
Beyond that my other thought is more philosophical: which is there is more to life than just work. I sympathize deeply with these founders because I had a mentality that was just like theirs. That mentality started to change once I met my now wife and we started building our life together. She and many of our friends are from Brazil and they taught me that the grind/hussle culture described in this article is very much an American phenomenon and everyone else is on the outside looking in going "what in the hell are those folks doing???".
When I started my company before I met my wife the goal was a billion dollar exit, private jets and super yachts and the idea that my company could become a tech behemoth. Now that vision has largely shifted to "I just want a small business that pads my income and maybe lets me buy a few toys"