My 3 cents on the Zepto story as a founder

Tldr; Fully support it.

I have 3 points

1. I am a founder here. And one of the major yardsticks you make decisions as a founder is based on how successful startups similar to you did.

Self-righteous folks on Twitter and Grapevine won't admit it, but the truth is some of the biggest companies in the world prioritised Growth over Work Life Balance and ig, they did FINE.. by work life balance yardstick, the likes of Zomato, Uber, Amazon won't be the huge giants they are today..

Simple - Zepto is following the proven pathway of success.

2. More so, they are open about it. Aadit literally mentions everytime that they are choosing growth over Work Life Balance and the folks who chose them should do the same. Otherwise, there are 1000s of "healthy startups" to work for. And the truth is people are doing the same.

3. And finally, building an operations heavy company from scratch is insanely heavy task. And the moment you slow down, your entire existence can be wiped down by your huge competitors who have truckloads of cash.. If you are fighting such an underdog battle, speed is your biggest weapon.. Zepto is using it well, I would say..

The fact is there is no one way of building the company and the outcome you are chasing pretty much determines the path you take as a company. And sorry, you can't create a $5Bn company in 3 years with "work-life-balance"

ps: We are not chasing that outcome, and that's the reason we work at a slightly above usual hours (~50-60 hours per week). But I totally understand why Zepto's doing it and truth is, if you or I were building another Zepto, we would have done the same (until unless you wanna disappear in 4-5 years)