Idealizing and romanticizing days of intense ‘work’ is a blunder and a cognitive bias. It mistakes effort for productivity, lack of sleep for perseverance.

While it is a time-limited experience, YC recruits are proud of those mistakes. It shapes their identity.

To the extent that a saner model will be more efficient I believe the market will show them wrong. If we pay attention: we already have plenty of examples of people that did not work like madmen and built successful businesses. We don’t hear about them as much, or choose to listen to those that say it’s hard to start a business.