Akeel JabberInvestment Director, Horizen Capital · Investor, Entrepreneur and Petroleum Engineer

Founder’s Flexible Work-Life Balance 🧠

18 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the founder explains how operating without external investors gives them the freedom to choose what and when to build. They describe a typical day: leaving the office at 5 p.m., spending evening time with their children, then reopening their laptop around 8 p.m. and working until the early morning. The speaker frames this rhythm as the “founder life,” emphasizing that the day never truly ends at 5 p.m. but includes a brief family breather before a second work session. They contrast this flexible, self‑directed schedule with their previous experience as an investment banker on Wall Street, where they endured 80‑hour weeks, seven days a week, and were constantly tethered to a BlackBerry. The overall message is that the autonomy of running their own business allows a more enjoyable, personally tailored lifestyle, even if it still involves long hours.

Chapters

I love that we have the flexibility to build what we want to build when we want to build it. So we don't have investors breathing down our neck. We have the ability to build what we like to. I like leaving work at 5 o'clock, going home and having dinner with my kids and putting them to bed. And then I unfortunately open up my laptop again at 8 o'clock and work till 2 in the morning. So that's just like, that's the founder life. You're not like, it's not like your day ends at 5. You just, I go home at 5, have a breather and like, not much of a breather. My kids are crazy, but like, you know, I have a breather. And then after that, you know, you get to actually like, you know, I get my work done from 8 to midnight. That's how I like to joke with my wife, but like, that's the, I think that just for me, just having the flexibility and the ability to kind of just like, you know, like run these businesses the way we want to and really having the ability to kind of like, like live our lives in a, in a, in a fun way. I, I, I started my career as an investment banker on Wall Street. It was like, it was 80-hour crushing weeks, 7 days a week, just not, just nonstop glued to your BlackBerry at the time, like lifestyle.