Michael Arrington on Twitter

Michael Arrington gave me this plug earlier today.  Not bad to have a rave review like that for the internet resume.  Everyone listen to Arrington, he knows what is going on in the tech and startup world.  His comment gave me 20 new followers within about 5 minutes, kinda fun.  Now I need to make sure I’m updating my blog and twittering the most amazing 140 character messages there are.

You know where you can find me on twitter if you’re on there already.

Calacanis posted a great post about money saving tips for a startup. His ideas include

• Buying lunch for the team and having meetings over lunch- Save time and not have other meetings.
• Buy Mac’s- more expensive up front, but save money on IT.
• Buy second monitors- makes people more productive and happy.
• Don’t buy a phone system- Most people can use cell phones, only buy phones for the people on them all the time.
• Buy the hardest working people computers from home so that they can work at home and on their own time.
• Get an expensive automatic espresso machine and keep it fully stocked with milks, nice beans, and syrups.
• Don’t waste money on PR or recruiters.

and the one that has created all of the publicity around the web…

• “Fire people who are not workaholics…. come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life. For realz.”

I thought the list was a great starting point on where to save money, and keep productivity up in a startup. I was going to blog about the article when I first read it, but before I got around to blogging about it TechCrunch attacked Calacanis with a post titled “Calacanis Fires People Who Have a Life.” Pulled a few quotes out of the post and basically slammed Calacanis for the last quote. As Calacanis later put it in a follow up post, that headline sure sounds like it’s out of the valley’s gossip blog, Valleywag.

So the questions is; Can you have a life and work at a startup? I think that you definitely can. I think that you need to work more than 40 hours a week at a startup and be very flexible in the hours that you work, but I don’t think you need to give up on the rest of your life either. I think that you can work 60 hours plus a week and still have a life. It seems like you can be a “workaholic” if you want to call it that, yet still have a balanced life. So many people want to say that if you work more than 40 you’re forgetting about the rest of your life and I just don’t think it’s that simple. It’s totallt dependend on how much you enjoy your work and how you’re able to change between your personal life and your work life.

Can you work more than 40 hours a week and have a life? 60 hours? When is it too much?

Also, any thoughts on Calacanis’ money saving tips? If I were to create a small startup I think I would take the majority of them to heard. Not because of him, but because I’ve been a part of the startup and I think that these could really work.

Calacanis’ How to Save Money Running a Startup

TechCrunch: Calacanis Fires People Who Have a Life

Calacanis’ response: Can you have a life and work at a startup company?