Getting Acclimated to 100 Hour Week

Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker in the room. – Dwayne Johnson

Climbing to the world’s tallest places presents both extreme physical and mental challenges. Moving up in altitude begins a physiological process called acclimatization that helps the human body adapt to the lack of oxygen at high elevation. Startup founders who dream of big success need to outwork and get themselves acclimated to the 100-hour workweek.

The depth of your struggle will determine the height of your success

No one said that entrepreneurship is easy. Every startup founder starts with a vision to change, to impact and build something meaningful. It definitely requires talent to be successful but more so requires that hustle to persevere. Mark Cuban, the famous Shark, the investor says that “Work like someone is working 24 hours a day to take it all away from you”. He adds for wishful dreamers that “Everyone has ideas, most don’t do the work required to get the job done”. According to Cuban, for startup entrepreneurs, it’s not about money or connections. It’s the willingness to outwork and out-learn everyone. No hacks. No shortcuts. Hard work is an unfair advantage.

In my own portfolio, over 100+ startups, I have seen startup founders who are curious, ready to learn and continue to find ways to work smarter. But the extreme success I would associate with entrepreneurs who work smarter, but they work harder, at 100X.VC we guide our portfolio entrepreneurs to constantly out-learn and outwork their competition. The business plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

Hard work doesn’t guarantee success but improves its chances.

There are enough blogs written on how 100 hour week will make things dull and reduce productivity. Yes, it is applicable, and they are right too. That’s the reason I always say that being an entrepreneur sound glamorous but requires that personality to digest hard work. To derive extreme success, it requires going off the work-life balance thoughts, especially at the early stages of building the company. Startup teams are filled with enthusiasm and contagious energy which help them long hours late into the night and through all the days of the week.

If you can’t outplay them, outwork them.

Hard work is vital for a startup. Founders need to be paranoid about their competition. They need to work hard, learn about their market better than the competitors. The team they hire has to be equally informed on the competition. If you have a team member which has limitations of not being able to match hard work culture, then it’s best to fire them quickly as it will drain out the energy from others.

Let me make it explicit on how startups should have their work culture at various stage of their life cycle.

1. Seed Stage - Founders 24X7 on the job to create the first version of the product, get the early stage of customers and start investor engagement.
2. Seed Stage Funded - Startup get their first cheque of funding, get their first hires and building of team starts. Founders do the running 24X7, and the team starts to follow their footsteps. There will be churn. There is no delegation here. Founders do 99% of the work.
3. Early Stage - Startup raises the first round of institutional funding from a micro VC or Angel Network. Founders start getting noticed by competition and customers. It is the time to get the existing team aligned to the 100-hour week rule. 100 hours workweek is only possible if the unit is aligned to the vision of the company and what it is trying to solve. This stage will showcase founders leadership capabilities.
4. Series A - Startup would have enough funding to start building the processes and hire senior resources. These hires should have startups experience, nimble-footed and empowered to take decisions. When the team has ownership of the task, they don’t look at hours of work but are focused on results. Founders have to move from activities driven to outcome-driven a smart way of working. 100-hour week rule applies to the top management team, including founders.

There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do

About 100X.VC

100X is the first cheque, SEBI registered VC fund and an investment adviser. 100X offers promising startups, seed funding, validates them and get them started. The team at 100X works closely with each company on every aspect of the business and make them venture investment-ready. One of the most important goals of 100X is to help every startup raise the next round of funding. 100X is a curated startup investment discovery platform for Angel Investors, HNI's, Family Offices, Angel Networks and Venture Capital firms. All that VC firms can provide is Money, Network & Experience. For us, money is a small component, but by far, our value is in the network of investor and experience in building seed-stage companies to scale. Visit www.100x.vc