Ask HN: Is your significant other supportive of your entrepreneurial tendencies? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is your significant other supportive of your entrepreneurial tendencies?

27 pointswhitepoplar17 comments

Unfortunately not and it sucks. Anytime I spend on my endeavours is considered a waste of time by her and it is difficult. She started out somewhat supportive but success has been elusive and faith has been lost over time so there is a feeling of having let both of us down. She wishes I'd focus on my job and do well in the corporate world but it's not what I want. Here's hoping (with some reason) to 2017 being the year I turn it around.

People put a lot of emphasis on success. I've seen the "need to succeed" destroy more projects and motivation than anything else.

I know someone who would be really interested in working on projects, enjoys programming, and so on, be very reluctant to take up projects that seem "iffy" with regards to financial success.

My point: being ruined financially by a project is one thing. It's another to program for fun. You can spin up a project for fun, as long as it isn't wrecking your bank account, and not have to worry if it's going to succeed.

I'm starting to think emphasis on success is necessary. It's something I have not had before, I tend to work on projects because I find them interesting or I believe they should exist because they are useful. I've always maintained a job at the same time so financial ruin is never a risk. The problem with this approach is it leads to any spare time outside of the paying job being consumed with projects/entrepreneurial pursuits which is the source of the friction, not enough of my time to go to the wife/family creating the perception of me being very selfish. Ideally you want to see some traction and then ditch the job, doing so before would add additional stress due to lack of income. However getting to traction while having a job is extremely hard. Ideally you want to move in with the parents or do this when you're young to make it easier on yourself and your significant other.

Remember, an extroverted engineer stares at OTHER people's shoes when he talks.

> I've always maintained a job at the same time so financial ruin is never a risk.

I think it's a definition of "financial ruin." If you quit your job and blow through your safety net (not your retirement or anything) I don't consider that ruin.

> Ideally you want to see some traction and then ditch the job, doing so before would add additional stress due to lack of income.

I think this is the way that a lot of successful projects have come. If the idea is too big to solve in your spare time, it does not fit into this model.

Not wrecking bank account shouldn't be the only concern. Wrecking relationships by being absent should also be of concern.

This is time management: it is hard, but it isn't impossible.

It's impossible without a supportive partner.

I think that's a different problem.

Yes, with some reservations. We met as one part-time business was failing, although he brainstormed ideas with me to try to make it work, and even came into the office on a few occasions to help out. He was supportive for four years, while I was getting a half-time masters degree, and while I wrote technical books (at the same time as a full time job and half-time degree!).

Although recently I said, only partly joking, "maybe I should go to law school..." and he was like (only partly joking) "Do you WANT a divorce?" So he does have limits!

But he's always been supportive of me flying to conferences, giving talks, running workshops, not being there in the evenings because I'm busy with one thing or another. He's even taking a few days off in January to go to a conference in Texas with me (he's not technical, so he doesn't actually go to my talks, but he can keep himself occupied around town, and we turn it into a mini-vacation in the evenings).

I give up a lot of weekends to freelance work, and we've discussed the possibility of me starting another business -- he's totally on board with it, despite the fact that I tried it once already and failed, AND having experienced firsthand how much time it takes and how much it will disrupt our lives. He doesn't understand most of what I do, and was never interested in understanding it (I've offered to teach him how to program, or show him code I'm working on -- he's always like "nah, that's your job"), but I couldn't ask for a more supportive husband for the things that really matter.

Not significant other but my family does not seem particularly supportive.

The concept of taking risks and sacrifices today for potential future benefits is completely foreign to them.

Pretty irritating. I don't have anyone cheering for me. It seems they are just waiting for me to any day announce that I have chained myself to another cushy office desk job and collecting the chunky pay check.

Just recently I had to break it down for my mother. I'll cut it short but basically I told her "If you are someone with a bunch of money you can invest it all in low-risk government bonds and wait for 50 years or you could show up at the casino and gamble it all in one game. They are the opposite ends of the risk spectrum. Never taking any risk is just as bad as taking huge crazy risks like gambling all your life in a game of poker. There's some middle ground. You gotta take a few shots while you have the time.".

Yes, but not without any tension. When we met it was implicitly agreed that I need time to build my own things on my free time, something she understand and appreciate. She does react when it becomes too much, which is great, because sometimes I do loose the track of time. But in general, yes.

It's early for me, but so far she has been behind me 100%. She supported me quitting my FT job that brought in 75% of our income when our first child had just been born to switch to freelancing. I think the key here is that the benefits of this change weren't just felt by me: not only did our income (security) go up, but I had more time to support her in child-rearing efforts and was generally a happier person, so I think these benefits earned trust for the next steps.

She is now also supporting me in dialing-down my freelancing efforts (and therefore our income) to focus on bootstrapping a small startup, even as we now have two young children. Outcome unknown, but I keep her posted and we talk about the business (ideas, ups, downs) on a regular basis.

That said, I myself am a very risk-averse person and we both are the kinds of people that have always lived frugally or "within our means". This means that, as a family, we have a very low "burn rate" and our runway on savings is very long. So the "risk" of failure is not really that high. We both know that if disaster struck (and yes, we have insurance too), I could get a 9-5 job almost instantly (as much as that might suck).

I think one thing to remember is that your spouse is only going to support you as long as your decisions benefit both of you (in the long run, at least). You want more time to work on a side-project? What are you going to change in your life so that your spouse is also getting some benefit?

Anyone wanting to delve a bit more into this type of relationship, I recommend listening to the Zen Founder podcast (http://zenfounder.com). Rob Walling (Startups for the Rest of Us, Microconf, and someone who's insight and opinion I respect greatly) and his wife Sherry talk about a lot of founder issues, but I find that the candid back and forth between them gives you a great look inside their relationship dynamic. They don't always agree, but they trust each other. That's what counts the most.

Yes, I share us much as I can with my wife, so far she gives the best entrepreneurial advises.

Yes, my wife and my son have been supporting me throughout the 3 startup exits I have overseen. They have sacrificed a lot of time and effort to support me. In return, I have earned enough money that none of us will ever have to work again.

I love having a supportive family.

Sort of. She isn't adverse to the idea of me making money doing what I love and I'm not looking for giant profits, just enough to cover monthly expenses (though I'm not opposed to making more, I'm just keeping it real at this point). That being said, she doesn't want me to spend any of our money. My company bank account has the short lived freelance work I've done, which I'm running out of. It is hard to do things to drive traffic without money so I have to get creative

She wasn't. Then I sold a thing I did and it paid off our house and invested a whole lot of money so that we don't have to care much about our retirement funds.

It wasn't a huge amount of money (about 10m SEKR, in my opinion vastly overpriced) but considering it was a thing I did just for fun in the beginning I am more than happy with the end result.

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