Years spent chasing startup success taught entrepreneur and CEO Ron Schneidermann a lesson he now wishes he had understood earlier: professional ambition is not worth losing moments with family.
The tech executive, who has led companies across the travel, outdoor and education sectors, reflected on the personal cost of extreme hustle culture while speaking to Fortune. Although his career eventually brought him major success, he admitted that the sacrifices he once normalised came at too high a price.
2 days off for daughter’s birth
Schneidermann said the pressure of building his first startup consumed nearly every aspect of his life. During the early years of founding Liftopia, an online marketplace for ski resorts, he lived frugally in a tiny apartment in San Francisco, survived on canned soup, and went without paying himself a salary for nearly two years.
That intense work ethic also affected his personal life.
When his first daughter was born, Schneidermann took only two days away from work before returning. By the time his son arrived three years later, he allowed himself a week off and considered it an improvement at the time.
“I look back, I was just able to justify it as ‘that’s just part of the grind’… but you never get that time back,” Schneidermann told Fortune. “That was a mistake.”
The 48-year-old said startup culture often encourages founders to wear exhaustion and sacrifice like symbols of dedication, but his perspective has shifted significantly over the years.
From Liftopia to AllTrails and Acely
{{/usCountry}}The 48-year-old said startup culture often encourages founders to wear exhaustion and sacrifice like symbols of dedication, but his perspective has shifted significantly over the years.
From Liftopia to AllTrails and Acely
{{/usCountry}}After helping grow Liftopia into a company generating more than $60 million in annual revenue, Schneidermann later joined AllTrails in 2015. He became CEO in 2019 and tried to build a healthier workplace culture than the one he experienced earlier in his career.
Under his leadership, AllTrails introduced a monthly practice where the company shut down operations on the first Friday of every month so employees could spend time outdoors.
(Also read: CEO praises wife for taking work call in hospital hours after giving birth, hits back at critics)
“For everything that was frustrating, that went wrong, that I regretted about Liftopia, I was able to take the inverse and turn it into a strength,” he said.
Last year, Schneidermann took over as CEO of Acely, an AI-focused test preparation startup. Instead of enforcing relentless productivity, the company now hosts monthly hackathons where employees pause regular work to explore ideas and experiment with AI tools without meetings or performance targets.