And I'd say, you really need to step outside the YC bubble
YC has nothing to do with it. We're not a YC company, and we have taken no outside capital at all, which is one major reason I've been working so hard... because everything that needs to be done, falls on the founders to do. There is nobody else, since we can't afford to hire anybody. OK, we did have a paid intern one summer, but that's the only time we paid anybody anything.
Now, of course, you could say "well, then go raise a round and hire people". To which I can only say, we have made the decisions we made, for reasons that are important to us, and we are happy with them. I think the day will come when we will look to rise outside money, but it'll be when the time is right.
Anyway, just wanted to make it clear that my personal story has nothing to do with YC, or the "pressures of being a VC funded company" or anything of that sort.
I do know if I were talking to any of my business friends, and I said, "I've got a great new idea for a business. The model depends on me working 100 hours a week for years on end," they'd laugh.
It wouldn't sound like a serious venture, it'd sound like I was joking. (Or, to be totally honest, it'd sound like I was taking a mean-spirited dig at the internet startup people who think that's not just OK, but normal!)
I'm glad you made the decisions you did. I wouldn't be happy with any choice that threatened my health as severely as you've described above, but that's where my priorities lay, and I totally get that you have others.
I do hope you have success, and can stop working such long hours, and that it comes before you have to make further sacrifices to your health.
YC has nothing to do with it. We're not a YC company, and we have taken no outside capital at all, which is one major reason I've been working so hard... because everything that needs to be done, falls on the founders to do. There is nobody else, since we can't afford to hire anybody. OK, we did have a paid intern one summer, but that's the only time we paid anybody anything.
Now, of course, you could say "well, then go raise a round and hire people". To which I can only say, we have made the decisions we made, for reasons that are important to us, and we are happy with them. I think the day will come when we will look to rise outside money, but it'll be when the time is right.
Anyway, just wanted to make it clear that my personal story has nothing to do with YC, or the "pressures of being a VC funded company" or anything of that sort.