'Shark Tank' star Daniel Lubetzky shares 4 ways founders can avoid burnout without sacrificing ambition

Daniel Lubetzky.

Bloomberg/Getty Images Daniel Lubetzky said he struggled with burnout while building KIND Snacks into a huge business.

He said the kind of nonstop grind he embraced early on left little room for recovery.

The "Shark Tank" investor shares 4 ways founders can protect their ambition from burnout.

Daniel Lubetzky built KIND Snacks into a multibillion-dollar business while running on four or five hours of sleep a night.

The "Shark Tank" investor said the grind left him looking like a "phantom raccoon," with little sleep, little sun, and no time to work out.

Founders often have to work intensely, he said, but the experience taught him that ambition needs boundaries.

That balancing act is getting harder in the age of AI.

The technology can help founders work across multiple projects and take on tasks they might once have outsourced, but its always-on nature can also encourage them to keep pushing — while fragmenting their attention in the process.

"You have to work hard, but you need to find the balance between working hard and also reminding yourself that it's a marathon, it's not a sprint," Lubetzky told Business Insider.

Lubetzky, who is launching the "Build or Break" podcast on September 3, shared four ways founders can protect themselves from burnout without abandoning their goals.

1.

Take deliberate recovery time Lubetzky said founders should expect periods of intense work, especially in the early years of building a company .

But he learned while running KIND that the pace can become unsustainable if there is no space to recover.