Ask HN: cofounders as couples ? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: cofounders as couples ?

Just curious (really) - are there cofounders on HN that are also in couple ?

Note that I'm not looking for pros and cons on the situation, more wondering if our situation is very common or not :)

If you're in a startup and happen to be married, your spouse is a cofounder whether you like it or not. So are the spouses of all the founders.

This applies both from a legal perspective and an emotional one. Plan for it. Write it in to the original agreement. Don't wait for divorce or (worst case) death to find out how much trouble this can cause.

I have to say though, having my wife actually involved, for us, makes everything better. Its much easier to bear the risks and make tough decisions with each other's support. Your mileage may vary.

Disagree. Your wife is an investor and there are legal and emotional issues to consider, but they otherwise aren't remotely like a co-founder.

That depends on how you choose to manage your company, your work/life balance, and your family system. Erin isn't a pro-forma "cofounder" of my company, but the more involved we've had her get, the smoother things have functioned for us.

Your mileage will clearly vary.

I've worked with founders whose spouses were completely disconnected from the company. They managed the "home front", took care of the kids, made sure the bills got paid.

I've also worked with founders whose spouses were part of the fabric of the company.

It just totally depends, Tony.

Oh, THAT I agree with. I know two husband-wife teams who are badass... And a few more where the wife participates in varying ways but has a day job.

I was taking issue with the "your wife IS your co-founder, whether you like it or not".

My wife has a job and has had no involvement with RescueTime other than a bit o' moral support. If that makes her a co-founder "whether I like it or not", then I have a bunch of good friends and a few family members who fit the bill, too. :-)

That's definitely a good point - thanks for the perspective!

There is a difference. A spouse is your co-founder because the company will affect his/her life just as much. And he/she will be thinking quite abit about the business. I am not sure, however, if your spouse being an official cf is good, and might discourage a third from joining because he/she will feel like the other side of the room hold all the power.

It goes further than that. It can easily be set up so that the first founder and his wife each get 1/4 and the second founder gets half to balance the power. This is done all the time.

The trouble comes when two founders own 1/2 each and one dies or gets divorced and then the spouse asserts an ownership (or worse, control) claim against the startup.

Here in the US, if not specifically set up otherwise, my wife would automatically get my shares (and voting power) in the event of my death. If she then wanted to "just sell the damn thing for whatever we can get for it now" just to get some quick cash, there would be little the other founder(s) could do about it if I had sufficient shares.

A simple and smart business move with a two-founder setup like this is life insurance held by the other partner, and a buy/sell agreement. That way, if you die, your spouse gets the cash, the other funder gets the biz. In the vast majority of co-founded companies, something like this makes sense, and term insurance is cheap, if you're under 40.

Here in the US, if not specifically set up otherwise, my wife would automatically get my shares

Your heirs (or anybody else you wanted to designate in your will) would get them even if you weren't married.

My wife and I cofounded our company. She is very good at product development and relationship building and I handle the technical side.

Plus since we have a near psychic connection our meetings are very short.

My wife and I have been co-founders of our nights/weekends startup from day one. She runs customer support (phone and e-mail) and is the prototype "seller" in our online marketplace. I handle product development, marketing, finances and some front-end design.

We spend most evenings laptop-to-laptop in "Genlighten World Headquarters" (our daughter's old bedroom.) Last night we worked the booth together at a startup demo event. It was tremendous fun and particularly exhilirating to be doing it as a couple.

Our CTO lives in another part of the US, and so far (~2 years) we haven't experienced any obvious problems with the couple + third founder arrangement.

Bottom line: it works for us.

Sometimes, late at night, maybe you're pair programming with your co-founder and your hands accidentally touch. And before you know it you're in a full-on agile scrum, burning down the back log, one of you the chicken, one of you the pig.

It happens. It's extreme.

Ew.

You never wondered why most people selected for YC are twentysomething men?

Erin isn't my cofounder, but she works for us full-time (both of us in technical roles). It works.

Thanks for sharing - are you just the two of you or are there more people working with you as founders ?

The company's 5 years old; we have a lot of people. I have two cofounders (Dave & Jeremy), both in NYC (we're in Chicago). When we started, Erin had a different job outside Matasano.

My parents started a company together. My mom had more drive and interest in managing, so as they grew she became CEO while my dad continued to tinker with IT. They've been working together for ~16 years, their company is doing OK, but my dad hasn't seemed happy about the situation in a long time.

I run a company that makes money.

My wife works for me and I work for her and it works great.

She is on my board so she is part of the team that can fire me.

She does the books (accounting) for the company so she works for me.

She's a very smart person and I value her opinion and every time she says that we should get someone else to do the books I say no because then she'd be less connected to the company and her board value would go down.

I do not think this will work for everyone. I suspect it works for us because we are a team in our marriage and we know it and own it. I pity the fool that messes with us, we're a team.

BTW, I agree with the comments that said that if you are in a startup your spouse is there too. When we got going I always got the permission of the spouse to hire the person. It's the right thing to do in many ways.

My wife helps me get perspective on lots of problems. She's not technical so it's good for me to solicit her views.

That's something that I find truely useful too. Cécile is less technical than me too, but she's very helpful on this.

When you're stuck, going back to the "why" and finding another way is very precious IMO.

I'm running a single founder startup and my wife is definitely filling in as a cofounder when it comes to helping me stay focused, talking me through problems, and basically just keeping me motivated. Every time I start getting distracted she brings me back around.

Ivan and Abby Kirigin of the (now defunct) TipJoy seemed to do pretty well.

Have a life outside of the startup. You really shouldn't talk business 24x7.

Some investors are assholes about women. Some investors have scar tissue from other couples. That is largely an incorrect view - when founders that are just friends break up a company, there is no reason to hate friends who are founders.

My rubric for picking a wife was more rigorous than picking a cofounder could possibly be. I have no idea how people find cofounders beyond long-term friends.

My longtime gf and I co-own our business. I run the technical side, she runs the business side. It works well, but you definitely need a strong relationship for it to work.

Also, since I do business in China and I'm a white foreigner, her presence as a native mainlander is absolutely essential. I have yet to meet a successful foreign entrepreneur here who does not have a native romantic+business partner helping him/her.

My wife and I are co-founders of our company. She handles the non-technical side, and I handle the technical side.

Just curious: are you sometimes trying to share the know-how (ie: her getting more technical a bit, and the other way round) ?

I'm asking because we're doing that a bit. The idea here is not to ensure she would be able to implement difficult features, but maybe deploy a simple ruby site on her own, or hack more css/html so that we're a bit more interchangeable.

What's your opinion on that ?

Collis & Cyan from Envato are an awesome and successful married founder team.

An interview with them is here: http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/news/birthday-interview-wit...

When one of my businesses took a major nosedive in 2003, my wife worked for me, she did the bookkeeping while I tried to keep the business alive (successfully, in the end). We fought a lot, but I have always appreciated that time -- I think it was a big help to our relationship for her to understand some of the ins and outs of business life.

We also have 'overshared' about business; for a few years of my life in a previous startup, she put in 3+ hours a day talking / planning / processing with me. That was not a good plan for us; my (unsolicited) advice: have some outside-of-work hobbies with your co-founding spouse so that end-of-job for one of you does not equal end of relationship.

My favorite restaurant (Rachel, in Jersey City) was just such a situation. The hostess/owner and the cook were dating. They broke up.

I miss their shakshuka, french toast, the brie and avocado sandwiches. Anyone know where to get good (and spicy) Shakshuka in NYC?

The Hummus Place (several locations throughout Manhattan) has great Shakshouka. They also have amazing hummus. Explains their name, I suppose ;)

What's your own take? Good/bad idea?

I think it's a very good idea in our specific case :)

Pros: - we're used to talking together a lot, including on topics that usually matter a lot for a startup: money-management, how to grow something in a sustainable fashion, bootstrapping, risk, handling conflict, trade-offs, brainstorming, ... - we're both in 'we want more time to accomplish things in trade of less money for everyday' mode - we've worked together already on difficult projects and it worked out really well - we're complementary on some topics and unique on others (I'm more technical / product owner, she's more business + brick and mortar) - validating an idea takes much less effort in this mode for us, apparently

Cons: - split work/home life properly takes hard work :) We've been doing plenty of personal development over the years - you have to ensure each one stays independent (money-wise) in case something bad happens between us (never know)

It can work well or it can be that one day you wake up next to your business partner instead of your wife.

The chances of that happening are larger as you get more successful.

I've tried this in one of my '9 lives', I will not try it again.

Our startup Webnographer is run by my partner and me. It works well. We have had the funny situation of having separate hotel rooms booked, as a client did not know that we where together.

I've run into several happy founding couples (not married, just dating). They rarely publicize it, so at first glance it seems to be less common than it actually is.

I'm pretty sure Ravelry was founded by a couple.

On the other anecdotal side Bebo was founded by a husband wife team as well. They seem to be successful on both sides

Other side of that anecdote. Flickr was started by Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield who are now divorced.

oh but back on the good side. Six Apart is a husband wife team

Cisco Systems was started by a married couple, Sandy Lerner and Len Bosack.

The founders of SixApart (TypePad, Vox, etc.) are married. She originally did the design, he wrote the code. They're still married.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com