The venture capitalists were not above inspiration culture. They shared reading lists and product recommendations, and advised their followers to stay humble. Eat healthy, they said; drink less. Travel, meditate, find your why; work on your marriage, never give up. They preached the gospel of eighty-hour workweeks, and talked up the primacy of grit. Whenever they denigrated the idea of work-life balance as soft, or antithetical to the determination necessary for startup success, I wondered how many of them had an executive assistant. A personal assistant. Both. I couldn’t imagine making
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