In past startups I would have agreed with you. When I did my first startup, I worked on it exclusively. I skipped vacations. I skipped classes (I was in school at the time). I did practically nothing else.
I burned out.
The title of CEO doesn't define me as a person. I'm just a guy that started a company. I get stressed. I need help at times. I have things I like doing unrelated to my company.
Blogging is one of those things. I blog because I love writing. Writing startup stuff for the HN community gives me purpose to that writing. It's a sweet bonus that many of our users are on HN, but that's not actually my top motivation. It's just because I like doing it.
As for 45 minute phone calls to help a friend. I'll bet the karma gets paid back nicely. But even if not, I'm not sure I could I look myself in the mirror if I became so self-important that I lacked the time to be generous.
In my experience, the difference between successful entrepreneurs who have a healthy balance between their personal and professional lives and those who don't is that the former prioritize and filter and the latter don't.
There are 24 hours in a day and each hour is precious. As the CEO of a young company, you probably have a significant amount that needs to get done each day, and you and your employees are counting on your ability to "get it done." If you're spending an hour on an "argumentative" phone call about startup philosophy with somebody who has an idea, you're trading an hour of time that can be used to benefit you or your company for an hour of time with a person who clearly prefers conflict to counsel. Let's talk about you, not your company, for a moment: in an hour, you could easily fit in a vigorous workout, take a power nap, enjoy a lunch with a friend or relative, or cook a meal for your significant other.
In reality, of course, the decision to give an hour to an individual who won't even reveal what he's working on sans NDA doesn't mean that you have an hour less work to do. It just means that you'll need to make it up, today or tomorrow, increasing the likelihood that you'll be "working late" and reducing the likelihood that you'll be able to fit in a vigorous workout, take a power nap, enjoy a lunch with a friend or relative, or cook a meal for your significant other. Activities that it should be noted benefit your overall well-being and are thus likely to have a positive impact on your performance as the leader of a company.
Obviously, I'm not saying "never take a phone call" or "don't be willing to provide advice." But as the CEO of a company with employees, you are important, and your time is valuable. Being unreasonably generous with it is not of benefit to your company, or you.
I have a rule that I'll never turn down a 30-45 minute catchup with someone who needs some advice, or wants a sounding board, or just wants to talk about something they're excited about. Life is about people, and has a funny way of turning things around so that those kinds of meetings grow into friendships, business connections, and sometimes of course - nothing at all.
Most people agree that mentor-mentee relationships benefit both parties equally well. I've definitely found this to be true. While these kinds of interactions may not be the same kind of dynamic as a long-term mentor relationship, spending a small chunk of time can also break you out of a rut or give you a new idea.
Don't discount the power of taking a few minutes out of your day to pay it forward.
But when you're the CEO of a company with employees and/or investors, you need to prioritize and filter, and you need to recognize the important, worthwhile conversations from the unimportant, unproductive ones.
Spending an hour of your time arguing with a person who doesn't want your advice in the first place and won't even tell you what he's working on without an NDA clearly falls into the latter category.
Startups are also built on reciprocity- I'm only here because mentors took time away from their successful companies to help me. Now, I'm helping others.
That means appropriately dedicating time and effort to your company, if you have one, but not forgetting to live your life too, continuing to invest in your personal relationships, etc.
Wow. What a sad comment to read. Being a CEO means being a leader, and not just of those that work for you, but to serve as a leader and thus guide others that are trying to trek the same path you've taken (and might re-take).
However, in retrospect, I concluded that serving as an advisor to another company while I was building a new company of my own was not a good decision. Did taking the time to advise another company have a material impact on the outcome for my company? I don't believe so, but I can never know either. And that's the thing: when you start a business, win or lose you should always put yourself in a position where you can look back and know that 100% of the hours you made available to your work life were dedicated to the right effort.
Plus, teaching others is one of the best ways to learn things for yourself.
There's a very simple way to tell if HN is really your target audience ... is writing startup bla bla that has nothing to do with your company the only way to get your company on the front page?
Startups pooping out startup-fluff advertisement-articles chasing that precious 0.x% clickthrough rates to their homepage is boring and a stupid 'plan b' for growing your business.
Companies that actually have relevance to this community have no problem getting traction here based on what they do - that's why we don't get spoonfed "how to be an entrepreuner!!!!!!" each week from Github, Dropbox, Parse, Amazon etc.
In other words, it's not that the majority of us are in the target audience of 42floors. But a large portion of the people they do want to target - people that want to or are starting a startup - do happen to be here. It's like precision vs. recall. That's why I believe HN is especially interesting to 42floors.
The reason the companies I mentioned have actual and natural 'hn marketshare' isn't because they're b2c vs b2b (which is incorrect anyway), it's because they actually do provide tools, services, platforms etc that HN users in enormous numbers need/want/use.
Potential customers could be reading company blogs. I would be concerned if the CEO was spending time ruminating about startup philosophy on those blogs to potential customers.
I don't know how you would you feel if you worked at the OP's startup, but I would have a problem with the notion that the person ultimately responsible for making payroll found it worthwhile and enjoyable to spend 45-plus minutes defending his views on startups and arguing with a person who wanted him to sign an NDA about an unrelated business idea.
It's not the 45-plus minutes, it's how he chose to spend them.
This might come off as overly harsh, but it's absolutely true: taking 45-plus minutes out of your day to engage in an "argumentative" call with "the brother of a friend" who has a "world-changing idea" is a waste of time. As is blogging about it.
Your job as CEO is not to advise other entrepreneurs or to preach the startup gospel; it's to steer your own ship.