Speaking on Harvard Business School’s The Founder Mindset podcast, hosted by senior lecturer and serial entrepreneur Reza Satchu, the Shark Tank investor argued that anyone trying to balance a young company against the rest of their life is fooling themselves. That’s particularly true in the earliest, most fragile period of building a company, he argued

“This concept in the founder years, which I call the first 36 months, the idea of balance is complete bullshit,” O’Leary said on the podcast posted Wednesday. “There is no balance. You have to work 25 hours a day, eight days a week because some guy in Mumbai or Shanghai is going to kick your ass.”

“It’s a global competition,” O’Leary continued. “Whatever your idea is, there’s somebody else with the same idea.”

O’Leary goes beyond the 24/7 concept to make a point. He wants entrepreneurs to understand dedication early on is the price of admission for success. 

“The founders that understand that sacrifice at the beginning is part of the price you pay, there is no balance,” he said. “And so the ones that are successful in my book—the ones I’ve invested in—are ferocious.”

O’Leary says he paid the price himself

O’Leary speaks from experience, having built a company he sold to Mattel for $4.2 billion in 1999 that ultimately made him a millionaire. He grew SoftKey from a basement startup to what he described as the largest educational software company in the world (by Oct. 1995, its products were found in 18,000 retail outlets and distributed in over 45 countries globally). But he was candid about the personal cost of building such a successful company. 

“I wouldn’t say I’m the best father, because I was never around,” O’Leary said on the podcast. When Harvard’s Satchu pressed on whether he regretted it, the Shark Tank star said he didn’t: “I just realized that was one of the costs.”

He was equally candid about the strain on his marriage, which he said included a two-year separation. 

“I’m very open about it and transparent,” he said. “I’m not the only marriage that that’s happened to.”

O’Leary and his wife ultimately mended their marriage, and he has even spoken out about how “divorce is the stupidest thing you could do,” although he has spoken about it more in terms of a union being a financial decision.

“Think of the geometric loss of wealth,” he told the Diary of a CEO podcast. Every time you get divorced, you pay the woman you divorced or the man and you pay the government a third, often, through capital gains and liquidation because you can’t separate all the assets without liquidating them sometimes.”

Other executives who don’t believe in work-life balance

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman has framed wanting work-balance as a warning sign in the people he backs. 

“If I ever hear a founder talking about, ‘This is how I have a balanced life,’ they’re not committed to winning,” Hoffman told a Stanford startup class, adding the only truly great founders are the ones willing to pour everything into the effort.

Cerebras cofounder and CEO Andrew Feldman, who leads the roughly $49 billion AI chip company, has made a nearly identical case. 

“This notion that somehow you can achieve greatness, you can build something extraordinary by working 38 hours a week and having work-life balance, that is mind-boggling to me,” Feldman said on the 20VC podcast in 2025. He allowed that a 40-hour-a-week worker can still have a “great life”—just not while building the next billion-dollar company.

But where O’Leary diverges in what he says comes after the grind.

For all his insistence that work-balance is a myth, O’Leary conceded a point that complicates it: Founders still need a stable home base. When Satchu argued you can’t build an ambitious company without a stable family unit behind you, O’Leary didn’t push back. 

“You do. You may not think that at the beginning, but you do,” he said. “And you really only appreciate them later. That’s the whole point.”