A day in the life of an American startup founder in Singapore who juggles timezones, 8 employees, and WhatsApp chats with hundreds of customers

• Sherry Jiang quit her job at Google to launch the personal finance platform Peek.
• The 32-year-old Singapore-based founder and CEO runs a team of eight employees.
• She balances work with personal time and has learned to prioritize exercise and sleep.

When Sherry Jiang , where she’s built a network of more than 18,000 followers.

“That’s actually how I get a lot of my leads, through my socials, so I post every day,” she said.

On this particular Thursday in August, she spent some time prepping for a team meeting that focused on onboarding: how to get people to sign up for the app and, ultimately, subscribe to it.

“We’re not having meetings for the sake of meetings,” said Jiang. “We do try to optimize our time together in person, and deep dive into problems that are more efficiently solved when we’re in person.”

In general, she says she has “way fewer meetings” as a startup founder than she did in the corporate world. “The problem-solving per hour I have is a lot higher in a startup environment because I’m spending less time on coordination and admin. It’s a lot more of just rolling your sleeves up and executing, versus spending time thinking about what to do.”

She works late most weeknights. After her 6 to 8 p.m. break, she spends the evenings doing administrative tasks, answering emails, and catching up on LinkedIn.

“This works for me but I think everybody has a different way they structure their weeks,” said Jiang.

Setting boundaries: ‘Date night’ on Thursdays and no-work Saturdays

It can be hard to feel like she’s ever off the clock.

“I have to remind myself that with your own startup, the work never ends,” said Jiang. “So you have to create the boundaries yourself; you can’t just let the boundaries happen based on the work that is always going to come.”

In a way, it’s “inevitable” to carry your startup with you wherever you go, she said. “But I also think there is a balance: It’s OK to have the gears be grinding but you also have to be super deliberate about setting aside time to not think about it.”

For that reason, Jiang protects her Saturdays. Unless there’s a special circumstance, like fundraising for the company, “I do not work on Friday nights, and I really try not to work on Saturdays, so I have that 24 hours where I’m just doing something else.

She doesn’t mind working on Sundays.

“I like having that time to do deep work and think about solving problems. I don’t have the space to do it during the week because I’m getting bombarded with a ton of things in all different directions,” she said. “It’s fun work in a way — things that are intellectually stimulating. I get to sit down and think about it for hours, and I’m not uninterrupted by other things happening.”

Jiang and her partner, who is also a startup founder, also block out one night a week — Thursday — to set work aside and “just hang out,” she said. “The rule is we can talk about anything but work.”

There appears to be at least one exception to the Thursday date night rule: Talking to a Business Insider reporter.