I've been critical of seeing so many 37Signals posts around here lately but this one really is a true gem! He's right, there's this idea that you just have to work 24/7 and have no life to be a success. Businesses aren't cool but startups are. What's the difference? These days the difference is one is cool and the other isn't. One makes you think of the 20-something hipster genius loner hacker and the other makes you picture a boring mediocre person who didn't have the balls to do a startup so he starts a "business" (eww, gross, right?).
I never thought of it that way. At first I didn't know what the hell you we're talking about because of the whole 25 hour a day work schedule people seem to think is necessary for startups but then I realized a lot of people, in some circles like you say, do a startup to avoid real work. I'm not saying a statup isnt real work, just that there is a group of people I've seen who go into some half baked startup idea because they seem to think if you call it a startup it's an excuse to play all day with personal projects that have no business model and hope to god the magic VC fairy will come to visit them one day.
It's all based on the misconception that if you work for yourself, you don't have a boss. In reality, you have a lot of bosses at that point it's just that they are called customers.
