I had heard the stories of entrepreneurs I look up to working long hours, forgoing a social life, losing girlfriends in the pursuit of their startup.  The value proposition here seemed straight-forward enough.  Given that you are trying to create a profitable, successful business out of nothing but an idea it would make sense that one would need to put in long hours.

So when I heard Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm and Handspring among others) give a talk entitled: “Inside The Mind of a Reluctant Entrepreneur“, it shocked me into some interesting realizations.  I won’t spoil the whole talk because it’s excellent and you really should listen to it as soon as you can.  But some of his basic tenets include: “Succeeding at a startup means making the right decisions and picking the right priorities; it’s not about the hours you work.”.

Here’s the thing: I’ve always powered through whatever task I’m doing… I have succeeded by outworking others.  In the context of a problem with clear defintion, this is a great approach.  However as the founder and CEO of a funded startup, simply powering through task after task is not what matters.  My investors, employees, and customers expect me to deliver results for them… in the end it doesn’t matter whether I work 1 hour or 20 hours a day as long as I deliver results.

So does this mean I’ve had a magical epiphany and will start working 2 hours a day?  Absolutely not.  In fact, I’ve adjusted my schedule so I have even more time for work.  But what I’m realizing more and more is the importance of setting the right direction for the company and for myself as CEO is incredibly important.  If as a company we are working towards the wrong destination, it’s useless for us.  It doesn’t help our investors, employees or customers.

These revelations started happening when Bilal, our new hire at emptyspaceads started on Monday.  From his outsider’s perspective, he identified the most important task for us to be working on as a company.  And we’re doing that now.  And I’ve never felt so sure we were doing the right thing for the company’s success as I am now.  As we’re working on this new direction, I can see how having too many simultaneous objectives hurt our ability to effective execute on each of them in parallel.  As a small startup with low headcount, you can’t really afford to puruse multiple objectives at once.  Plan, execute, review.  Rinse and repeat.

More to come on this subject.