While this might not be the typical advice on work-life balance, Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder thinks that if you want to win in the startup game, balance might be a luxury you cannot afford.
In Nigeria and probably across the world, young founders often chase the dream of building the next big tech company. To scale fast, raise capital, exit with billions while trying to strike a work-life balance. Hoffman is waving a big red flag.
Start-ups can’t afford to take time off from working, except for this one daily ritual, Hoffman says
Even though one-third of employees in LinkedIn’s early days had children, taking time off was not an option, with the exception of dinner at home.
“When we started LinkedIn, we started with people who had families. So we said, sure, go home have dinner with your family. Then, after dinner with your family, open up your laptop and get back in the shared work experience and keep working,” Hoffman said during a podcast appearance last year.
Where “soft life” has become the goal for many young professionals, Hoffman’s words may sound like a hard slap. But for him, it is the honest truth of startup culture.
“If I ever hear a founder talking about, ‘this is how I have a balanced life’, they’re not committed to winning,” Hoffman told students at Stanford’s “How to Start a Startup” class in 2014.
Even after the pandemic forced the world to reconsider work culture, Hoffman’s stance hasn’t changed.
“Work-life balance is not the start-up game,” he said on the Diary of a CEO podcast.
Critics have called this mindset toxic. But Hoffman claps back with equal energy.
“The people that think that’s toxic don’t understand the start-up game, and they’re just wrong. The game is intense. And by the way, if you don’t do that, eventually, you’re out of a job.”
Still, he points to results. According to Hoffman, roughly 100 of LinkedIn’s early employees “don’t need to work anymore” because of the sacrifices they made.
The entrepreneur opined that his approach to work schedules offers a glimpse into the demanding culture that helped shape LinkedIn into the professional networking giant it is today, before Microsoft acquired it in 2016 for $26.2 billion.
