In the early years of Amazon Inc., Jeff Bezos personally interviewed all potential employees, and if they “made the mistake of talking about a desire for a harmonious balance between work and home life,” Bezos rejected them. A Twitter exchange in 2017 between investors Blake Robbins and Keith Rabois ended with the latter prevailing by suggesting that technology moguls such as Elon Musk worked without interruption to achieve success: “Entrepreneurship requires total commitment”.

If this is indeed the case, should we have overlooked the fact that on January 6, 2025, Amit Banerji, co-founder of the startup Table Space, died of a heart attack at just 44 years old? Perhaps we only begin to feel a trace of revolt when we understand that other technology entrepreneurs have met similar fates, in some cases even through suicide: Rohan Mirchandani of Epigamia, Ambareesh Murty of Pepperfry, Aaron Swartz of Infogami, later acquired by Reddit - and the list (unfortunately) goes on.

In this context, excluding candidates who raise the topic of work-life balance during interviews, beyond reflecting a potentially toxic organizational culture, represents a wrongful and discriminatory practice. On the other hand, from the individual’s perspective, assuming that ensuring balance between professional and personal (private) life lies exclusively with the employer betrays a misunderstanding of one’s own responsibility. As we shall see, both attitudes are equally erroneous, though for different reasons, and their consequences can sometimes be tragic.

In argue that work-life balance is subjective and integrative, and nobody can impose their own level of balance on another person or group without violating their autonomy. My intention with this essay is corrective in nature with respect to the public discourse on work-life balance and the hope is that it contributes to a (more) constructive dialog moving forward.

The Status Quo

The idea of limiting working time is not new. In Private Government, Elizabeth Anderson points out that “the central struggle of British workers in the mid-nineteenth century was to set limits on the length of the working day—more so than to obtain higher wages”. The concept of “work–life balance” is generally considered to have emerged alongside the Women’s Liberation Movement in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Although flexible working hours and maternity leave were initially used as incentives to encourage women’s participation in the labor market, the idea of balancing professional and personal life expanded toward the end of the twentieth century to encompass all professionals, regardless of gender.

The annual report of the recruitment company Randstad shows that in 2025, 83% of the 26,000 employees surveyed across 35 countries cited work-life balance as the most important factor in choosing a current or future job - tied with job security (83%) and slightly ahead of salary level (82%). At the same time, according to a study conducted by Remote.com, New Zealand confirms its position as the country with the best work–life balance in 2025 for the third consecutive year, ahead of Europe, which dominates the continental rankings with seven European countries in the top ten.

At the EU level, work–life balance for parents and carers establishes common minimum standards across member states for family leave and flexible work arrangements, including protections against discrimination and dismissal for workers who exercise these rights. In addition, a 2017 study shows that in nine countries (Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Latvia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, and Sweden), burnout syndrome can be recognized as an occupational disease.

In the United States (ranked 59th out of 60 in Remote.com’s work-life balance index; 2025), many aspects related to working hours, breaks, and paid leave are regulated at the state level, since federal work-life balance legislation is far more limited under the Fair Labor Standards Act. There is no general limit on daily or weekly working hours, only rules regarding overtime pay beyond 40 hours per week. Meal or rest breaks are not mandatory, but when offered and lasting under 20 minutes, they must be paid. Unsurprisingly, in the American Psychological Association’s Work in America 2024 survey, one third of workers explicitly report lacking sufficient flexibility to balance their professional and personal lives, and over 40% say they work more hours per week than they would like.

We are thus presented with an array of practices regarding work-life balance, far from universal: from a socially recognized right supported by public policy, to informal negotiation that is often culturally or professionally penalized. And although these approaches reflect different perspectives on responsibility for work-life balance - whether as an institutional problem or a private one - workers, regardless of geographical context, tend to converge in their need for balance between professional and personal life.

Organization’s Error

Although Elizabeth Anderson acknowledges significant progress in working conditions, particularly compared to historical periods when slavery was widespread, modern workers nonetheless live in a state of “republican unfreedom”, meaning they are subject to the arbitrary will of others. Embracing the term explicitly, Anderson identifies the central figure of arbitrariness in labor relations:

“Surely many CEOs in the U.S. who consider themselves libertarians would be surprised to see themselves portrayed as dictators of little communist governments. Why don’t we recognize such an omnipresent part of our social landscape for what it is?”

This arbitrariness can take many forms and spills over into work-life balance, as illustrated by Jeff Bezos’s response during an all-hands meeting when asked whether Amazon would establish a better work–life balance:

“The reason we’re here is to make things. That is the top priority. That’s the DNA of Amazon. If you can’t excel and can’t put everything into it, then this may not be the right place for you.”

To dismiss a person simply for raising a topic to which one lacks a substantive response reveals an instrumental view of employees, as means rather than ends in themselves. Moreover, the assumption that someone interested in work-life balance is, by definition, professionally irresponsible and therefore underperforming lacks empirical support and instead reflects the unrealistic expectation that individuals be available to the company without limit, thereby violating personal boundaries.

Another argument advanced by critics of work-life balance is that if balance is so important to an individual, then they must lack passion for their professional activity, disqualifying them from success, which supposedly requires sacrifice. Though distinct, both arguments share a common bias: that individuals who prioritize work-life balance are unproductive.

Admitting that working from home falls under the umbrella of work-life balance, numerous studies, including Bloom, Han, and Liang (2022), show no substantial positive or negative effects of hybrid or remote work on productivity. This finding undermines the primary criticism of hybrid or remote work (a component of work-life balance) advanced by executives such as Elon Musk (Tesla, Twitter), Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan), and David Solomon (Goldman Sachs). When combined with studies showing positive correlations between job performance and work-life balance, the evidence offers a strong counterargument to the perception that those seeking flexibility and autonomy are less productive.

So why not promote such a balance as employer? Do we not want increased long-term individual satisfaction without harming productivity, maximizing well-being without productivity loss? Pragmatically speaking, stagnation in productivity is not an option for companies, and the prevailing belief is that maximizing surplus from professional activity requires sacrifices in personal well-being.

Yet framing the issue this way resembles the well-known anecdote in which, to make a delicious breakfast of eggs and ham, the chicken (the company) is involved, but the pig (the employee) is sacrificed. If we assume that resolving this imbalance requires a transfer of risk from one party to the other, we merely resort to measures drawn from the same logic that created the problem. Even calls for a fairer distribution of benefits fail to offer a lasting solution. Judged from the standpoint of sacrifice, compensation never seems enough; judged from the standpoint of compensation, sacrifice always seems insuficient. Any viable resolution, if there’s one, must transcend this dichotomy.

Individual’s Error

From the individual’s standpoint, the situation is more complex, because we must clarify both the multiple meanings of “work” and the actual issue of work–life balance responsibility.

Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, we distinguish between labor, work, and action. Arendt argues that modernity inverted the traditional hierarchy: instead of labor serving work (to build a world), and work serving action (to provide a stage for noble deeds), modern society has become a society of laborers and consumers. She warns that homo faber risks losing intrinsic meaning by turning everything into a means to another end, shifting meaning away from “immortality” (leaving a trace through action) and “durability” (creating a world through work), toward mere life maintenance and the biological “happiness” of the animal laborans.

Thus, for Arendt, to “work meaningfully” is to refuse reduction to the status of animal laborans, to assume responsibility for creating a durable common world (through work), and, more importantly, not in isolation, but alongside others, in plurality.

Where, then, should we seek meaning? If we accept that meaning belongs to one of life’s domains, the professional sphere may be a valid space for such a search. But, which of Arendt’s meanings should guide us? Or perhaps professional life becomes meaningful when evaluated through Robert Nozick’s criteria in Anarchy, State, and Utopia:

“(1) the opportunity to exercise one’s talents and capacities, to face challenges requiring independent initiative and self-direction (and thus not boring, repetitive work); (2) an activity regarded as worthwhile by those engaged in it; (3) an understanding of one’s role in achieving an overall goal; and (4) a structure such that decision-making sometimes requires consideration of the characteristics of the broader process in which one acts.”

Nozick’s phrasing (“achieving an overall goal”) implies a strongly materialist sense of meaning. In acknowledging this material dimension, I would add a nuance: prioritizing the depth of the field within which meaning is sought. As I interpret Nozick, meaning can be found; but if it can be found, is it not rather a goal? And once reached, do we seek another? That would be meaningless.

We may accept Nozick’s sense of meaning and conform to a succession of life plans, milestones we pass through. Or we may attempt a metaphysical supplement, akin to escaping Plato’s cave: a search for meaning not fixed in advance, but revealed at each step of the way, perhaps even accepting lower pay on the grounds that the work is intrinsically satisfying. We may arrive at the same “place” (not necessarily materially), but our starting posture matters for the journey ahead: in one case, the pursuit of material happiness; in the other, the reduction of spiritual suffering.

After this philosophical detour, where does the individual’s error regarding work–life balance lie? I believe it lies in failing to assume responsibility for the meaning of one’s work. Once this responsibility is consciously taken up, the sought-after balance emerges naturally from that meaning, not from arbitrary organizations or public policies that may or may not exist, or may satisfy to varying degrees. The question of a “balance point” between professional and personal spheres then loses its object.

What, ultimately, is the meaning of this work–life relationship? If oriented toward work, toward what meaning? If toward life, toward what meaning? Balance for balance’s sake? And how do we define balance anyway? Do we possess a measuring instrument, like a scale, that tells us with precision how many units of balance we have left, or when we become obese with life or malnourished by work?

Time spent in the 16 hours outside the standard 8-hour workday is called “life” only insofar as work itself is “death.” And if so, it is up to you to give meaning to this life-death oscillation. Once that meaning is found, the pendulum collapses, like a quantum function, not because one state disappears, but because the opposition itself ceases to exist. Only insofar as you have found a life’s work can you say that you are in balance.

At this point, we might be tempted to side with critics of work-life balance who accuse individuals of lacking passion for work. But passion is not a guarantee of long-term productivity, and meaning is not the same as passion. Passion is intensity marked by instability; without discipline, it lacks orientation and does not rise to the level of meaning. When individuals are both passionate and disciplined, they are productive precisely because they possess the maturity to manage their work–life integration.

So why do employers still avoid work-life balance discussions or disqualify candidates who initiate them?

Perhaps balance becomes more attainable when the search extends across one’s entire personal life, encompassing everything outside the professional sphere. Within this personal space, we may carve out a direction. I deliberately avoid the verb “to find” when speaking of meaning, because that implies a pre-existing target. Meaning, I believe, involves “optimistically and patiently searching for the unfound, rather than hastily finding what was never sought” (Pleșu, 2020, p. 141). If the end of searching were a fixed point, reaching it would dissolve meaning itself.

Meaning persists as long as we remain engaged in mapping an interval, perhaps dynamic, but one that contributes to the coherence of life, for ourselves or for others.

Assuming responsibility for this search of meaning, regardless of domain, entails discipline. This is where work–life balance “hides”, if we insist on using that term. Work-life balance thus belongs primarily to the subject’s responsibility, and the balance point or interval, however defined, cannot be imposed externally on another person or group.

If I understand R. J. Arneson correctly in Human Flourishing versus Desire Satisfaction, even if we accept an objective list of elements for a good life (including work-life balance), the balance ratio itself must remain subjective. The need for balance is objective, but the balance point varies even for the same person across contexts, because: (1) it has an intrinsic source - the individual; (2) the ratio between what must be balanced varies across individuals and contexts (not everyone requires 50/50); (3) the resulting productivity also varies with individual and context.

Reconciliation

As stated from the outset, my goal is not to offer a generic solution. Any solution appropriate in one context will be inadequate in another. Rather, I invite both sides to reflect on the narratives they adopt, narratives that fail to foster genuine dialogue and often remain trapped in blind spots. Revising the flawed work-life balance narratives discussed here requires acknowledging that:

a. Persistent organizational resistance to work-life balance suggests the problem is wrongly framed as a zero-sum game between productivity and well-being. Risk redistribution and sacrifice compensation remain insufficient because they preserve the same dichotomous logic.

b. Individuals’ externalization of responsibility, expecting organizations or public policy to solve work-life balance, is illusory. Balance is personal and results from the discipline with which individuals negotiate their professional and personal obligations.

c. Companies seek predictability; employees seek flexibility. Though seemingly incompatible, predictability requires companies to reduce arbitrariness, while flexibility requires individuals to assume responsibility for autonomy.

Minimizing organizational arbitrariness while individuals assume responsibility for integrating professional and personal life constitutes, in my view, a necessary condition for a work framework that respects autonomy without compromising collective performance. As Levitt and Dubner note in Think Like a Freak, adversarial “us versus them” frames define conflictual relationships and change requires reframing: from adversarial to cooperative.

I will not endorse a specific methodology, but I favor those that provide predictability in both directions, accompanied by decision transparency, that support sustainable performance, avoid conflating unlimited availability with professional responsibility, and integrate work-life balance directly into work organization.

I also advocate deliberately (though not obligatorily) introducing open work-life balance discussions into recruitment processes, as they can benefit both parties. A candidate’s ability to integrate professional and personal activities into a coherent life framework may serve as a necessary (though not sufficient) selection criterion, potentially yielding long-term benefits in ownership of performance.

Final Thoughts

Do we desire a life without work as an answer to work-life balance? We may receive it, at least some of us, as the AI waves are already underway. As we move toward a future where each person has an AI assistant with increasing autonomy, are we prepared to end work-life balance debates altogether? If work, understood as executing task sequences, is outsourced to AI agents, what do we make of our work?

As Arendt showed, work transforms and changes meaning. Work-life balance, formulated in twentieth-century terms, may acquire new meanings and shift toward other life spheres in a future where human involvement in labor diminishes.

I cannot claim I have a conclusion in the strict sense, beyond showing that work-life balance tensions cannot be resolved through organizational imperatives or passive individual expectations, because the problem is misframed as an opposition between productivity and well-being. Balance is not a fixed point (nor interval) imposed or measured externally, but a variable quantity dependent on the individual and his/her context, emerging from assumed meaning of work.

Over the past few months, and most recently at a CEE tech conference, I met dozens of founders I deeply admire for their passion and resilience. Yet beneath the optimism, a quiet unease lingered. Many expressed a shared disorientation: a feeling of drifting without fixed reference points, propelled by the inertia of the AI wave we all seem trapped in, heading toward a shore we cannot (yet) see.

I was reminded of a 2012 interview where Jeff Bezos warned against “chasing the hot new thing,” comparing it to trying to catch a wave already breaking. Instead, he advised founders to “position themselves and wait for the wave to come to them” by focusing relentlessly on the customer.

But in today’s hyper-accelerated AI landscape, that advice feels almost impossible to follow. In fact, the same Bezos described AI in 2024 as a “horizontal enabling layer,” claiming, “There is not a single application that you can think of that is not going to be made better by AI.”

The Returns

For decades, tech entrepreneurship has been biased toward growth. It’s our universal metric of success, measured in revenue, users, or valuation. The larger the dollar value and the shorter the time span, the greater the growth rate. Founders are praised for achieving it; investors are rewarded for spotting it early.

We tolerate early inefficiency, both moral and financial, because we believe progress will redeem it later. OpenAI generated around $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025, about 16% more than it generated all of last year, burning $2.5 billion in the process.

Anthropic revenues have grown rapidly this summer, jumping from $4 billion to $5 billion in just a few weeks, hoping to reach $9 billion by the end of the year (2025). At the same time the company agreed to pay $1.5bn to settle a class action lawsuit filed by authors who said the company stole their work to train its AI models.

Or consider the CEO who declares, “I’ll fire anyone who doesn’t use AI,” or the enforcement of a 996 work culture. These aren’t aberrations, they are expressions of a belief that temporary distortions are acceptable in the pursuit of progress. As Gordon Gekko, beautifully played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street (1987), famously put it:

“Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms.”

A recent UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report project the global AI market will soar from $189 billion in 2023 to $4.8 trillion by 2033, a 25-fold increase in just a decade. Such projections feed the entrepreneurs’ conviction that growth is both inevitable and desirable.

The Costs

Our reductionist obsession with growth blinds us to a fundamental economic variable: cost. Behind every exponential curve lies an invisible cost curve rising just as fast. The energy consumed to train ever-larger models, the legal and ethical fallout of unlicensed data use, the psychological toll of constant acceleration. These are all part of the same equation, just written on the other side of the pendulum.

Cost is often treated as an afterthought, something to be optimized “once we scale.” This mindset shapes not only how we build, market, and sell, but also how we lead. It encourages us to defer reflection, to kick the can down the road and rationalize inefficiency as “fuel for growth”.

Aristotle, in Oeconomica, offered a timeless warning:

“There is a consideration which is common to all branches of economy and which calls for the most careful attention, especially in personal economy, namely, that the expenditure must not exceed the income.”

Somewhere along the way, technology entrepreneurship lost touch with this basic (and ancient) principle. We built a trust economy, a system where projected future value is traded as present capital. We monetize hope (and hype) by pricing the promise (valuation), not the realized utility (value) produced by our labor (intellectual or otherwise).

In other words, we’re betting that LLM costs will collapse like semiconductor prices once did, and that AI demand will explode as the Internet’s did. Neither trend is ours to command, yet history tempts us to believe it’s inevitable because from renewable energy to internet infrastructure and electric vehicles, the pattern seems to repeat.

Many startups, following this “Bezosian wisdom,” use that argument to justify waiting. And if things happen to unfold in their favor, they claim victory, wearing the laurels of success, even if they were merely beneficiaries of a hopeful tide. Meanwhile, they perform their little theatrical ritual, pretending to deliver productivity gains without looking closely at costs. When they do, they shrug it off: “That’s someone else’s problem.” The cost of maintaining this act compounds over time, culminating in the erosion of customer trust. And if we really want to take history lessons, we shouldn’t be selective: in every technological wave, correction arrives sooner or later; usually before either demand or cost catches up.

Once more, Jeff Bezos on AI (2025):

“This is kind of an industrial bubble. It could even be good, because when the dust settles and you see who are the winners, society benefits from those inventions... and that’s what’s going to happen here.”

Economically, this echoes Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s The Entropy Law and the Economic Process: every act of production consumes energy and creates disorder. Systems that ignore cost imbalances must, eventually, return to equilibrium, often painfully. In startup terms, that equilibrium arrives when capital dries up, demand stalls, or trust evaporates.

The Cost of Returns

Today, some contrarian investors are starting to pay more attention to fundamentals - a welcome sign of maturity. They are beginning to recognize that: (1) AI-driven productivity is asymmetrically distributed, and (2) it comes at a cost.

I believe we are starting to shift gears, realizing that efficiency is the new metric in the age of AI. Not only growth, and not even productivity (understood as raw output). By optimizing operating costs, realized productivity moves closer to potential productivity. When this happens, the value created by an AI product (the outcome) aligns with that of the startup building it (the valuation). This isn’t to suggest that valuations must fall; rather, that the real value created through AI products can finally rise to meet, or even surpass, those valuations.

This is what I call the unbiasing pendulum of entrepreneurship: the recognition that growth without cost is an illusion. It’s a pendulum because collective opinion is swinging to the opposite extreme of what was once the unquestioned norm. It’s unbiasing, not because it overcorrects, but because in its natural motion, it passes through both poles (growth and cost) giving the entire system its balance and weight.

The unbiasing process means restoring cost as a fundamental variable in value creation because there are no absolute returns, only relative ones defined by the price we pay to achieve them.

But we should be cautious. As Hannah Arendt warned in The Human Condition, when efficiency becomes an end in itself, we risk forgetting why we sought to innovate in the first place. That brings to mind two final things: the Knobe effect and the parable of the Mexican fisherman.

The Knobe effect describes how moral evaluation shapes our perception of intentionality. When a side effect is morally good, we tend to judge it as unintentional; when it’s bad, we judge it as deliberate. Joshua Knobe attributed this to moral reasoning; others have linked it to psychological bias or the implicit trade-offs between profit and principle. The takeaway: our moral framing influences how we interpret actions, especially those justified by “efficiency.”

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, the economist mentioned earlier, argued that the true product of the economic process (subject to entropy) is the pleasure of living. Without purpose and pleasure, he claimed, we cannot speak meaningfully of economy. If the answer to “why efficiency?” isn’t grounded in ethics and human well-being, then perhaps we’re doing it wrong. And that brings us to the parable of the Mexican fisherman:

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

“Not very long,” answered the Mexican.

“But then, why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more?” asked the American. The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family. The American asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

“I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs ... I have a full life.”

The American interrupted, “I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat.

“And after that?” asked the Mexican.

”With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise.”

“How long would that take?” asked the Mexican.

“Twenty, perhaps 25 years,” replied the American.

“And after that?” the Mexican asked.

“Afterwards? That’s when it gets really interesting,” answered the American, laughing. “When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!”

“Millions? Really? And after that?”

“After that you’ll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends.”

The unbiasing pendulum of entrepreneurship can be a reminder for some of us that progress without reflection risks becoming motion without meaning and perhaps the real measure of innovation is not how fast we move, but how consciously we account for the cost of the journey.

Inspired by some bright minds at globalventurenetwork.com (thanks Alper & Attila), this tiny essay is an extension of a recent presentation I gave at The Leap of Tech by How To Web in Bucharest/Romania.

The beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is that there’s no universal, guaranteed formula for success. Yet when we describe successful (tech) founders, we often put them on pedestals and drape them in supernatural traits, as if they were superheroes.

That’s a fallacy.

In a culture where perception threatens to become reality, the image of the super‑entrepreneur, an out‑of‑this‑world Superman/Superwoman, pushes us toward two unhelpful extremes: (1) “go big” embracing a distorted reality in which the world around us is divided into winners and losers and the sole aim of entrepreneurship is to attain unicorn status; or (2) simply “go home”, a retreat to the back seat born of the belief that, without superhero DNA, entrepreneurship isn’t for us.

I find it almost hilarious how fascinated many VCs are with unicorns, especially in startup ecosystems that aren’t yet mature, like much of Eastern Europe. Yes, privately held companies with $1B+ valuations can have a multiplier effect, inspiring employees to launch their own ventures. But if you zoom out, about half of unicorns are founded by repeat entrepreneurs with prior (non-unicorn) exits, and 80% of top-valued unicorn founders had either worked in another entrepreneurial business or founded a previous venture before their breakout success (see Endeavor report).

That suggests a different (but complementary) thesis: a mature ecosystem isn’t one that lucks into an unicorn, it’s one that produces repeat founders who compound experience, networks, and scar tissue into systemic value creation, some of which will eventually take unicorn shape.

Let’s flip the coin. Instead of myopically waiting for the next accidental unicorn to emerge, wouldn’t it be more productive to build the infrastructure that systematically increases the odds of unicorn creation? Imagine deliberately encouraging founders who’ve had “modest” exits ($10M, $20M, $30M, etc.) to try again with a second or third venture. In doing so, we’re not celebrating small wins as endpoints, but cultivating a repeat-founder mentality. And it’s that funnel, not lottery-ticket thinking, that ultimately yields unicorns and a resilient ecosystem.

That’s why, I believe, a better representation of a founder is Batman/Batwoman. Human, not alien. Vulnerable, not invincible. Perhaps a savior at times, but not a superhero. Bruce Wayne chooses to BECOME Batman. Clark Kent IS Superman. That brave decision of becoming makes all the difference. The journey demands discipline, and the transformation is grounded in the realization that success is a spectrum, not a single or fixed destination (the unicorn). Let’s unpack.

The Decision

The first defining act of a Batman‑founder is deciding to step onto the entrepreneurial path. Starting a company places a person at the center of an unwritten meta‑narrative, one that intertwines their own story with those of co‑founders, investors, employees, partners, and customers. In that sense, there’s no such thing as “self-made entrepreneurs”.

As Noam Wasserman shows in The Founder’s Dilemmas, would‑be founders face predictable pitfalls: launching without the skills or motivations to sustain success; focusing on business mechanics while ignoring personal implications; falling in love with an idea (or with “being a founder”) and avoiding objective evaluations; jumping in too early and courting avoidable failure, or waiting so long that golden handcuffs tighten with lifestyle and pay-check. He also highlights two primary entrepreneurial motives that repeatedly appear in his large‑scale study (10,000 founders throughout a decade): control (autonomy, influence, leading people) and wealth (financial gain).

Batman‑founders are not seekers of security. They’re risk takers, but with a purpose.

Evidence suggests that hyper‑optimism can be costly: Wasserman studies revealed that higher‑optimism entrepreneurs can see materially lower revenue and employment growth than their more clear‑eyed peers. The point isn’t to be cynical; it’s to temper ambition with reality.

In making the decision, Batman‑founders must keep their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Once the choice is made, life becomes an exhilarating mélange of determinism and free will that gives way to both excitement and uncertainty punctuated by moments of chaotic manifestation of passions (the most important source of entrepreneurial motivations).

The Destination

What keeps a Batman‑founder going through the failure‑success roller coaster isn’t a set destination (the unicorn status). It’s a posture.

“Criminals are like weeds, Alfred; pull one up, another grows in its place.”

Nihilism aside, the line reveals a more informative perspective: the founder’s role is an ongoing undertaking. The “destination” is revealed episodically through growth and it’s not a number. This isn’t about (artificially) moving the goalposts to please VCs. It’s about pushing the limits of who we can become and the value we can create, for others and for ourselves.

This is where internal vs. external motivators matter.

We often hear that “good is the enemy of great.” I don’t agree with that statement because it’s yet another false dichotomy fabricated to polarize perspectives. By definition, a perspective serves the purpose of complementarity toward an objective reality that we’re all trying to grasp. Yes, one perspective can be better than another, they’re not equally right or valuable, but let’s be serious: if the enemy of “great” is “good”, what can be said about “worse”?

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to understand that “good” is part of the sequence towards “great”. So, how about we treat “good” as being the neighbouring ally of “great”?

This isn’t license for complacency. It’s realizing that achieving a certain milestone does not mean it is the end of the journey, that we have arrived. It could very well be just the beginning of another one, perhaps yet to be defined on the basis of our previous accomplishments. Sometimes, the second mountain becomes visible only from the peak of the first.

Rather than defining success by counting externals (ARR, headcount, funding, etc.), Batman-founders refine internally sourced destinations around their potential for perpetual self-creation. Instead of being stuck on a pedestal and living off past glory, they form a habit of projecting a future that draws them to venture farther, anchoring their success less in doing something great (winning no matter the costs) and more in becoming someone great(er).

That is a Batman‑founder’s worthy destination: not a unicorn valuation, but a repeatable, integrated way of operating, coherent across ventures and across one’s life.

The Discipline

Between decision and destination lies a gap and in that space lives discipline.

Many in startup land hear “discipline” and picture corporate bureaucracy. That’s not what I’m advocating for; rather, discipline as the practice of entrepreneurship, the healthy fundamentals required to build durable, compounding value with and for others. Intention, reason, behavior, and action must all align toward a chosen result. It’s the craft of consistently doing the right things for the right reasons.

Value is not an inherent attribute of a Batman-founder, but an emergent property of practice: the systematic testing of character at the limits, where method meets principles.

Consider a familiar scenario: a startup stretches the truth (nicely put) about its platform being AI-powered to land a big customer. Is that a good outcome? Commercially, maybe yes. Is it disciplined? No, because the result rests on deception. If conduct contradicts the reality (or team’s values), the inconsistency erodes trust and culture. That’s not discipline; it’s drift.

Conversely, one can do the right things for the right reasons and still lose a deal, perhaps a cheaper competitor grabs it. Was that miss caused by discipline? Of course not. Discipline doesn’t guarantee favorable outcomes; it builds a repeatable way of operating that connects the decision to found one or more startups with the lifelong destination of becoming a great founder.

A final nuance: some argue that ethics has little to do with startups (“move fast and break things”, says Mark Zuckerberg), that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits”, as economist Milton Friedman argued in his book Capitalism and Freedom.

If we’re going to quote Friedman, let’s do it fully: “…so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

Nobody is perfect, least of all startup founders (not even Batman). For some of us, entrepreneurship becomes a lifelong practice of self-realization. It’s less about chasing unicorn status and more about the discipline of creating (repeatable) value by honing our strengths and character in service of others.

That is the work. That is the way. That’s why we are Batmen and Batwomen.

I was reflecting on a conversation I had recently with an aspiring entrepreneur. They were excited about the prospect of founding a startup because: "It's easier to start one today with AI."

They elaborated with conviction: a team is no longer necessary since AI agents could build the first version of the product, automate early marketing, and even generate revenue. All while they traveled the world, free from the corporate golden handcuffs.

I admit, it was a compelling picture of acceleration and independence fueled by the rise of vibe coding and AI workflows.

As someone who’s been an entrepreneur for over 15 years, with a reasonable degree of success (sold my AI startup to Algolia in 2021) and the privilege of learning from founders and leaders I deeply respect, I’ve come to hold a pluralistic view of entrepreneurship: there is no objective “right” way to do it. That’s not to say, however, that all paths are equally effective. Even with all the frameworks, methodologies, and tactics available today, startups still fail, sometimes spectacularly, while others achieve meteoric success that catches even seasoned observers off guard.

Because of AI, a (not so) quiet revolution is underway. Perhaps it would be unwise to dismiss it as naive just yet. Tech entrepreneurship, once the domain of the few highly skilled, suddenly feels accessible to the many, even the less equipped. And who doesn’t want more entrepreneurs, right?

Curious to better understand this dynamic, especially among first-time founders, I began to notice that it is less about a long-brewed desire to solve hard problems or a cultivated growth mindset, that fundamentally encourages them to take the leap of faith and jump into the abyss of entrepreneurship. Instead, they are being pulled in by the commoditization of coding and the illusion of proximity to success. They’re being swayed out of their shell because the fog has lifted just enough to reveal the first few miles of a once-hazy path to startup life. And on that newly visible path, the scenery is seductive: green pastures, birds chirping, and unicorns roaming freely.

Isn’t that a brittle foundation on which to begin an entrepreneurial journey? Are those really the expectations that prepare first-time founders for the winding road ahead?

I’m proposing this to be a symptom of a myopic understanding of entrepreneurship, a narrow belief that because the tools (be it AI) are easy, the path must be too. The result might be a new generation of startups that are technically (or at least what passes as technical in a vibe-first shipping mentality) impressive but fundamentally hollow.

I call them mayflies (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayfly).

The velocity with which new (vibe) ventures are built appears to be inversely proportional to their business sustainability. The faster and easier a product is to build, the more fragile it becomes as a business in the long run. This is the Mayfly Effect.

A mayfly startup can potentially enjoy short-term success but fails to create long-term value because:

(1) AI lowers the entry barrier for certain classes of startups/products/services;

(2) Upon recognizing the opportunity, more players join the game;

(3) As more and more players enter the same game, the margin value converges to zero because, like it or not, AI (especially LLMs) is still expensive for complex use-cases and it'll probably be the case for quite some time. Even with AI costs lowering, the race to achieve business sustainability, meaning balancing Return-On-Investment for customers while ensuring healthy margins for the startup offering the product/service, is brutal.

Among all the mayfly startups already popping up left and right, I still believe that a few will achieve escape velocity. It’s a numbers game and inevitable, really, just as it’s true that most will fail. And that's okay because at the macro level, both success and failure contribute to the emerging AI economy.

But, if we zoom in at the individual-level and take the first-time founder perspective, the critical question becomes: How do I think about my place in this new AI reality?

While consciously embracing mayflyism might be viable path for some, I’d suggest that working our way out of it begins with a commitment to intellectual honesty when dissecting the real value of "AI" in an “AI startup”. Consider the following exercise:

1. Imagine you live in a world without AI.
   How would your startup look like? What's the value it could create for customers in this scenario?

2. Add AI back in.
   What actual problem(s) does it solve compared to the non-AI version? And what real value are you adding by introducing AI?

3. Imagine you already have customers using your non-AI version and you want to sell them the AI solution.
   What is the actual delta in terms of ROI that would justify a switch over to the (most likely) more expensive AI-powered solution? And then, given the margins and the implementation costs, do you (still) have a business? What are the tradeoffs?

Through the lens of these questions, at the extremes, we might identify two main types of AI startups:

* (Majority) Startups where AI is just a feature (an add-on) to a core problem-solution space, where the already existing solution doesn't involve AI. The likely winners here are incumbents that are fast at adopting & introducing AI functionality to their (existing) customers. Their sluggishness can create short-term opportunities for new startups to capture that value, but raises the question of long-term moat durability.

* (Minority) Startups solving fundamental problems that can't realistically be solved without AI, or where existing solutions are grossly inefficient without it. Again, the most likely winners here are the ones first to market, with a strong distribution strategy and a defensible long-term advantage.

Therefore, I advocate for a return to fundamentals when it comes to founding startups in this brave new (AI) world. What's the actual business if we remove AI altogether? Does it hold water without it?

If YES, you might be building an AI feature. Fine, but can you turn this into an actual product/business that stands on its own? If NO, you might be tackling an important/fundamental problem. Great, what's the go-to-market and (long-term) moat-building strategy?

A final word on mayflyism and its protagonists.

It is not my intention to be mocking those who try this route into entrepreneurship, quite the opposite. It’s an invitation rather, to reflect: if everyone can found a tech startup, what becomes of startups that are worth founding? It’s about noticing the shift (or perhaps acceleration of a dormant characteristic) in entrepreneurial intention, from mission-driven resilience to opportunistic automation and ephemerality; from building something that endures, to shipping something that trends. And perhaps most importantly, it’s about understanding what gets lost when building becomes too easy.

Because winning? That’s easy to see for everyone, hence the hype.

This isn’t to say ambition is lacking. In fact, many of the founders I interacted with myself are deeply ambitious, but their ambition is often decoupled from the discipline of entrepreneurship, the practice of entrepreneurship which is NOT limited to a set of technical skills (engineering or business). What we’re seeing is not a lack of effort, but a redirection of effort toward acceleration, rather than depth.

Mayflyism disregards the fact that the most meaningful outcomes in entrepreneurship are shaped by what can’t be automated, the intrinsically human skills that define good founders, cultivated continuously over time: emotional intelligence to make sound judgment calls, and the clarity of thought required to cut through chaos. It is not precision that the practice of entrepreneurship calls for. It’s resilience.

I don’t see the mayfly founder as unserious. They are simply swimming in a cultural current that rewards velocity over durability, hype over hardship, and momentum over mastery. And the danger isn’t failed attempts. There are valuable lessons in those. But it’s the individual burnout, the long-term erosion of what entrepreneurship actually means: solving meaningful problems, for real people, in ways that withstand both market shifts and personal disillusionment.

This is not a critique of those who dare to start, please do! But in doing so, perhaps it’s worth occasionally reflecting on why we start (even why we continue), how we build, and what we define as success. That reflection can act as a mirror, offering a more nuanced perspective on entrepreneurship, one that goes beyond the glamour.

So while vibe coding has cleared the fog from the trailhead, it may have also blurred the horizon because the clearer the beginning seems, the more invisible the mountain ahead appears. And it takes consistency and a certain kind of maturity, forged in the fires of entrepreneurship, to realize that the uphill climb is the way, not the obstacle.

Part of a demo day talk I delivered for StepFWD pre-accelerator years ago.

Our story (1/3 Listen, 2/3 Learn) ends with the same charismatic young woman who, after 3 years of grinding, managed to grow the company to a decent size, revenue was growing steady and they were getting ready for a major financing round.

Then the global pandemic hit. All of the sudden, mayhem everywhere. We all felt it in 2020, so we can understand how our entrepreneur felt.

She’s previously been told that building a startup is hard, one of the most difficult things she would probably ever do, that one out of ten succeed and, still, she embarked on the journey. “It’s 1% luck and 99% hustle”, they said… except the pandemic made it even harder, one hundred times harder.

She got angry and, internally, declared her disapproval. Her plans have been thwarted by the COVID-19 crisis.

“It’s so unfair! It’s so frustrating. It’s just not right …”

But, as much as she desired, she couldn’t alter reality. Again she called upon her mentor, who became their advisor in the mean-time. While talking to him she suddenly realised how much of what she was doing was out of her control, that other people, including her team, were affected by the crisis just as well and might need her help now more than ever.

“Reality is a stubborn thing, so you must embrace it!”, her advisor said.

First, she summoned the team and assured everyone they had money to pay salaries for at least another twelve months. Nobody was getting laid off. Survival was the name of the game now. They needed to reflect and adapt, to go back to the drawing board and think of the impact they could and wanted to have with their business during or after the pandemic. Long-term thinking was to be their mantra.

Second, she began having conversations with all their customers; not business or commercial conversations like before, but personal, meaningful ones, showing genuine care for the people behind the titles. Yes, a few customers froze their accounts, others canceled, but most continued using their product.

Nine months later, by the end of 2020, things started to shift in a major way: instead of them looking for funding as it was the case at the beginning of the year, investors were flocking to learn more about the company and potentially investing. Her courage and confidence to do what she knew was right, even when everything around her crumbled, were critical. As a result her business was in an unique position to take advantage of the new reality. At the same time, she understood it was less about something they had done and more about the world changing around them.

The story of our charismatic young entrepreneur ends here. But ours, mine and yours, continues. What will we make of it?

As we could learn, working hard is not enough. Timing is key and luck is real. But all of this without the courage to LEAD through hardships is meaningless. Leadership is an inside game: we need to first lead ourselves before leading others. We need to take responsibility for our own actions, not blaming others. We must be brave in the face of adversity and lead by example, not run away and hide. “It’s not my fault, it’s not my problem, don’t blame me!”, these are not phrases that can exist in our vocabulary.

None of us are courageous all the time, but there are key moments when the choices that we make, make us. “No, I won’t agree to that term sheet! No, you’re not the right partner for us! No, I won’t give up!”

Let’s train ourselves to do the right things, not the easiest things. To saying “NO!” today and leave room to saying “YES!” to something better tomorrow. But we have to carry our own weight in this world, not having someone else carrying it for us.

As the stoic philosopher Seneca said: “If you have passed through life without an opponent no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”

As founders, we might feel alone at times. If we learn to listen and listen to learn from others, we’ll not be alone. We must embrace the roller-coaster of entrepreneurship, to turn to our WHY and lead. Leadership is not about satisfying our ego, it’s not the job title we write on our LinkedIn profiles. It’s the respect and influence we have without all of that, when we build a team of leaders around us and empower them to be brave, confident and humble.

This foundation is what will make you and me succeed.

Part of a demo day talk I delivered for StepFWD pre-accelerator years ago.

The story continues (1/3: Listen) with the same charismatic young woman who, after talking with her mentor, gathered her team, presented the problems and asked: “What do you all think we should do?”

It felt like the longest minute of silence in her life.

Then the awkwardness was interrupted by the most unexpected team member of them all: the one who had considered leaving the startup. He began asking questions about what customers were saying and challenging how interviews were conducted. Other team members answered and offered their perspectives on ways they could approach the customer interviews differently. They even suggested things to consider in the new iteration of their product. Pivoting was also discussed. Everything was on the table and what had been scheduled as an hour-long meeting stretched to three hours … and pizzas were ordered. Nobody wanted to go home, so they kept going.

During all this time the hero entrepreneur of the story just stood in awe, witnessing the miracle that was unfolding before her eyes. Her team was tossing ideas back and forth, most of which she hadn’t even known were possible. She caught herself asking questions because she genuinely needed to understand, to LEARN how to do things better or differently. She concluded that her team knew more about their competitors than she did and was ashamed to admit that she mostly disregarded them instead of learning from them.

Such is the power of listening!

We do that to understand the other party, be it a teammate, a customer or even a competitor, to learn about them or even about ourselves. It takes patience to listen, but it takes humility to learn. Being humble doesn’t mean we’re thinking less about ourselves; it means thinking about ourselves less and thinking about others more. How can we have an impact on those around us so that, in return, they have an impact on others? It’s the #givefirst mindset we ought to practise.

It means viewing our competitors as worthy rivals, people from whom we can learn and whom we can respect, even when we meet them on the battlefield.

But being humble is the last thing that crosses our minds when we think about a founder, entrepreneur or investor. Let’s be honest: what’s our mental image when we think about these roles? It’s the go-getter, right? The person who always has an answer, an opinion on any topic, showing no vulnerability, perched high up in their ivory tower. We see that in other domains too: in sports, politics or business. We celebrate aggressiveness, the iron fist, the stick and we consider the carrot to be for weaklings.

“Mental health is for spoiled brats”, as I’ve heard an investor say recently.

Let’s not mistake that posture for confidence; that’s impulsiveness, recklessness and cockiness. It’s shallow and it can (and will) affect our decision-making. Looking down on people, be it customers, competitors or other founders is short-term thinking. It’s about winning a battle today and perhaps tomorrow, but it’s losing the war.

Instead, confidence is when we have the courage to say: “I don’t know! I don’t know the solution to this problem, but I am willing and able to take on this challenge and see it through. I may not have all the information today, I may not have all the answers now, but I believe that, as a team, we can do it”.

And we don’t have to be loud to be confident; in fact, confidence can be quiet. Confidence isn’t something we’re born with, none of us are, but it’s something we can learn. As the stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius once said: “If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”

It’s hard for us to be what we cannot see. Being humble means realising that our victories depend upon other people, while being confident is the willingness to take action on something that makes us uncomfortable.

So, let’s learn to be humble AND to be confident.

Continued at 3/3 Lead.

Part of a demo day talk I delivered for StepFWD pre-accelerator years ago.

I want to share with you three stories (1/3 Listen, 2/3 Learn, 3/3 Lead) about the ups and downs of founding a startup, building a team and growing a business. There’s a lesson in each of these stories and my aim is not to provide you with more answers, as is usually the case with this kind of content, but to leave you with deeper questions to reflect on: why you’re doing what you’re doing, who’s it for and what’s it for?

The first story, on listening, is about a charismatic young woman who recently left her well-paid job in a multimillion-dollar corporation to start her own company. She believed the knowledge she had gained in the corporate setting would come in handy when founding a startup. She had always dreamed of controlling her own fate, waking up each morning with no one telling her what to do.

Putting together a small team and cranking out their first MVP came easily. A natural people person with solid sales experience, she felt confident selling their product wouldn’t be an issue, so she financed the first few months out of her own savings.

Six months into the project things started to unfold in a ravaging manner: the MVP was on its third iteration and prospects still weren’t convinced of its value. As a consequence only a handful were willing to take the leap of faith and pay for it. Barely enough to cover another six months. They were in dire needed of more revenue. Worse, one of her teammates had just received an attractive offer from a well-known company and was seriously considering leaving the newly formed startup.

She felt stuck. She didn’t know what to do and summoned all the courage she could muster to call her mentor whom she hadn't spoken to in a while. She felt guilty about the lapse, but desperately needed the advice.

Phone rang, and there it was: the most soothing “Hello dear!” she heard in months.

After bringing him up to speed she almost felt out of breath, yet she pressed on: she described how she wanted to start fundraising immediately, launching a public beta with the few customers they had and hire more people to scale the operations.

The mentor simply listened.

She went on outlining her five-year vision for the company and criticising their better-funded competitors for “doing it wrong”. And then she paused for a moment … about five seconds of awkward silence settled between the two.

“What do you think?” - she finally asked.

The mentor took another few seconds and then replied: “What does your team think about all this?”

“My team!?” - she repeated in a lower, almost shameful tone. “I … haven’t asked them!”

How often have we been in a similar situation where we thought we had things in our control, that our team’s role is merely to execute, believing that just because we’re the founders, the solution must obviously come from us.

Isn’t that the norm, our expectation of ourselves and others’ of us? This is so ingrained in our DNA that we grow myopic, driven by our bias for action and the very hype we eventually succumb to. Instead of always parroting answers left and right, to this and that customer, to this and that investor, we forget to slow down, to stop this maddening rush and become the ones who LISTEN!

Ancient philosopher Epictetus said two thousand years ago: “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” Yet here we are in the 21st century clamouring for attention: talking, posting, always being “on” and feeling the urge to have an opinion just about everything.

What about hitting pause for a moment and asking others for help? And actually listen to what they have to say, not so that we can answer back. Are we afraid that our silence will cause people to not like us? Then let’s speak if we must, but let’s pose questions that create the space to listen even more. How might our worldview change if we shift our attention from chasing approval to not only hearing others, but truly listening?

Continued at 2/3 Learn.

At a recent orchestra concert, a surprising thought emerged: startups and orchestras have more in common than one might think. Each musician, like each team member in a startup, plays a distinct role while contributing to something greater than themselves.

What fascinated me was how diverse individual expressions could still create harmony through shared direction and leadership.

Some musicians are precision-driven: their posture strict, movements calculated, and eyes fixed on the sheet music. They approach their role like engineers: disciplined, methodical, and focused on technical execution rather than dramatic flair.

And it works for them. Their mastery comes through clarity, consistency, and control, grounding the overall performance with stability.

In contrast, others seem almost airborne, leaning into their instruments, swaying freely, visibly moved by the music. They embrace expressiveness over perfection, allowing their passion to spill into every note and gesture.

And it works for them too. Their emotional presence brings life, connection, and spontaneity to the composition, enriching the overall experience (much to the audience’s delight).

Yet what strikes me most is that these musicians aren’t isolated performers, but interdependent contributors to a shared vision. Both styles coexist without conflict, distinct in method, united in intent. And what enables that cohesion is the conductor, a leader who sensed the whole before it became audible to the rest of us.

And it works for all of us.

Isn’t that the essence of a successful startup?

A startup may feel more like an improvised jazz session than a symphonic performance, but the core truth holds: a great team, like a great orchestra, thrives not by eliminating differences but by harmonizing them under a shared direction.

It’s not uniformity that creates value, but a leader’s willingness to recognize each individual’s unique potential and ability to integrate their contribution into a coherent mission.

And when it works, it does because directed action becomes harmony, not noise.