If it cuts into my ability to work at my startup, I'll stop immediately as that's my #1 priority. You'll be surprised though that even putting in 60 hrs a week into a startup, exercising and having a significant other, if you work efficiently you still have time left. (168 hrs in a week - 60 - 8 hrs a day for sleep = 62 free hrs left. 1 hr a day for exercising and 2 hrs a day for an SO leaves 41 hrs left. )
But really though, I don't know. This might turn into a lesson about how distracting side projects can be while running a startup. Or how to optimize your time more efficiently. Or even how to run a bad experiment. If this turns out to be a really bad idea, I'll learn from it, share it with you guys and move on.
Thanks for watching out for me though. I appreciate your concern.
In any case, your post is really focused on 'good ideas', which is all well and good if you have one -- but had you taken that stats class in college, I think you'd find a preponderance of evidence to support the notion that successful execution of the the idea is a more important factor than having the idea. Neither Pinterest nor AirBnB are unique or exciting ideas - and where the rubber meets the road, it's also extremely unlikely that either are worth anywhere near 1B. Have you seen the Facebook/Zynga/etc. stock prices lately?
man.. we're such geeks
Should make your desperation (& success) even better.
Sure, there are plenty of stories about people who were desperate and became successes. You never hear about the hundreds of thousands of people who were desperate and became abject failures. There are also people who are successful who were born with silver spoons in their mouths. So I would not make any type of correlation between some extreme emotional state and being successful. If anything, it might make you squirrely and detract from your obligations at your startup.