The Founder that lives in the office

By 20VC

Categories: VC, Startup

Summary

A founder at Corey demands employees work weekends with no days off, sleeps only 3-4 hours nightly, and lives in the office—embodying an extreme hustle culture philosophy that prioritizes company growth over personal longevity and work-life balance.

Key Takeaways

  1. No weekend time off policy enforced at company level—founder eliminates Saturday and Sunday as days off to maintain competitive intensity and commitment from entire team.
  2. Founder operates on 3-4 hours of sleep per night as standard practice, suggesting sleep deprivation as normalized executive behavior and potential unsustainable business practice.
  3. Physical presence in office enforced through founder's own example—literally sleeping at workplace on a mattress to signal commitment and eliminate excuses for team members.
  4. Founder explicitly rejects work-life balance trade-off when asked about trillion-dollar company versus living to 80, revealing priorities that favor business success over personal health and longevity.
  5. Extreme founder lifestyle reflects high-intensity startup culture where personal sacrifice and continuous presence are used as competitive differentiation and team expectation-setting mechanism.

Related topics

Transcript Excerpt

If your days off happen to be Saturday and Sunday every week, then you will not have a place at Corey. >> So you literally live in the office. >> Yeah, I have a mattress there. I don't sleep a lot. I think the average night probably 3 to 4 hours. Would you rather Corgi was a trillion dollar company but you died at 50 or it was a fail and you lived till you were 80? I mean, I think the answer to that is pretty easy.…

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