Oof!
Can't run a start-up part time: have to give it everything you've got.
I think this is largely a result of, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, a Silicon Valley cultural pathology that says that you're not really working unless you're working until 4 AM in the morning.
I have never had an interpreter throw an InsufficientlyDedicatedToTheProjectException. You are probably not in a business which has radical changes on a week to week basis. Why assume that pace is normative?
We loved the product we were building, so that kept us going. For geeks/hackers, the primary motivation is to build something they like, instead of $$. The money is incidental and its easy to get carried away with the 'product'. Some of us ended up working 7 days a week, 15 hrs a day on it. 4am everyday (and partly because some team members were in India). I think the frenetic pace, esp. is startups is natural and a good thing, but the key is to work smart - not just hard.
The experience has made me ask to myself almost every time I see a cool web app - 'ok, but how will it make money ?', and if it can't, then it would not be more than a short-lived dream for its founders and backers.
Never got to test that theory out, because even if enough people wanted the product, the business model around it is something which we haven't been able to figure out. We have the product's version 2.0 sitting ready (substantial updates from whats visible in ver1.0 demos) but we do not see a clear exit yet, so are hesitant to launch it. Being blogged about major tech blogs (from Lifehacker, Mashable, etc), some folks loving it around the world and writing reviews in ~ dozen languages - we already got that love. If we stayed out in the market more - we'd probably get more 'love'. But 'love' can only keep the servers humming for so long :)
Btw, Alertle is a completely single page application - can call it '100% AJAX'. Demos still available at: http://varunmathur.net/post/83802002/alertle-current-status
