Another bullshit dichotomy. We want to change the world in a big way. We certainly face hard odds (building a multi-million dollar business is very hard regardless of how you go about it). We just want to do all of that and do other things at the same time. So far that has been going pretty well.

I honestly don't think 37Signals is changing the world in a big way. You're not inventing the transistor, you're making one of many online to-do lists and chats. I'm not saying the products aren't nice, they are. But they aren't gamechanging in any way.

You're great at marketing though.

I'm pretty sure Rails was game changing.

Lisp was gamechanging, C was gamechanging, maybe fortran was gamechanging.

Rails is just a framework, albeit a popular one. Let's see if people still use it in five years, or if they have moved onto the new new thing.

Maybe in the way it's encouraged other web frameworks to adopt MVC, but that's not a huge deal. MVC has been around for a long time anyhow.

It didn't change the whole world just a little bit (which is what most people mean by "change the world"); it changed one tiny segment of the world—webapp programming—a lot. I think that's even more laudable.

It did bring Ruby into the mainstream.

It's not a dichotomy, it was a generalization and certainly there are exceptions. My point wasn't that it's impossible to change the world with a balanced lifestyle (Reagan famously stopped work at 5 at the White House and he certainly made a dent in the world). My point was that some people love to be monomaniacal and throw themselves at huge problems (or huge risk)-- just because that's not your bag doesn't mean it's the wrong choice.

MOST of what people would characterize as "lifestyle businesses" are owned by people who have other priorities. And if the mega-risk startup junkies look down their noses at that, it's their fault-- not yours.

"I’m not saying that you can’t have success by pouring in all your waking hours. Of course you can. I’m saying that you don’t have to. That the correlation between the two is weak."

I still don't get this argument I see afloating the past days from 37signals.

Hard work is hard work. It can occur in 6 hour span. It can occur in a 10 hour span.

First-time entrepreneurs will always commit their whole waking and sleeping hours to hard work. When they are burned they will know they need a balance.

It's about character and experience. When someone has succeeded he will surely happily commit to other stuff to provide a happy balance to their life.