Yeah, the definition of desperation seems a little odd to me. When I was doing my startup, having money to hang out with friends was a non-issue, because I had no friends.
(FWIW, I've done an experiment on myself similar to this but more extreme: I forbid myself from having a social or romantic life while working on my startup, so that I was doing basically nothing except working and reading startup blogs. My results were that I made myself hella insecure, nearly drove myself crazy, and my startup failed anyway. But I did learn a lot about myself and what I wanted, did some cool side projects, and improved my programming chops enough to get into Google, so it wasn't a total loss.
Even that I wouldn't really equate with being "desperate", which I usually equate with not knowing whether you'll have food or a roof over your head at the end of the week.)
(FWIW, I've done an experiment on myself similar to this but more extreme: I forbid myself from having a social or romantic life while working on my startup, so that I was doing basically nothing except working and reading startup blogs. My results were that I made myself hella insecure, nearly drove myself crazy, and my startup failed anyway. But I did learn a lot about myself and what I wanted, did some cool side projects, and improved my programming chops enough to get into Google, so it wasn't a total loss.
Even that I wouldn't really equate with being "desperate", which I usually equate with not knowing whether you'll have food or a roof over your head at the end of the week.)