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Comment by marcelluspye | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I understand the message of this article. Is it just that people in a (good) marriage have better (emotional, financial) support systems, and are therefore happier? The subtitle would lead me to believe that the article is encouraging founders who are single to seek out a marriage just so they can strain it in the name of their startup. Treating your spouse like a weird type of employee is all kinds of unethical.

Like, who is this article for? Are there single founders in committed relationships who aren't taking the next step because they fear they'll break the ranks of stereotypcial single founders? Founders in bad marriages (which I would believe make up a decent portion of them) know that their work isn't helping their relationship, and those in good marriages already know this.

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There is nothing unethical about it. Marriage was an economic arrangement long before it was a romantic one. And it still serves that function: it diversifies peoples' income sources, changes their risk profile (as the article points out), allows amortizing many fixed expenses, etc.

For most of history, society has told young men to get married so they can form households. There was a good reason for that (aside from propagation of the species): it's very difficult for a single man to, for example, run a farm by himself.

Why does anyone need to be married to do any of the above?

The article is talking about "married" as the opposite of "single." Whether you're legally married, or "functionally" married is somewhat besides the point. (Although, as a pre-packaged set of rules governing economic partnerships between two people, marriage still has a lot to offer. E.g. if you keep a 9-5 to pay for health insurance while your spouse throws herself at a startup; you'd be daft not to have some sort of arrangement in place to share in the upside if she is successful.)

I think the author is not aware that the general trend of marriage, at least in the United States, is happening later than ever before for both young men and women.

Nobody lives in a vacuum, and there will be drastic demographic changes in the United States. If you have a culture where even looking at a woman is construed as harassment, this is the result. Let's not forget about being saddled by mountains of uncancellable college debt. I'd rate this article a solid C+; pseudointellectual tier.

I think that the bigger issue isn't founders in relationships putting off marriage, but founders who are put off dating all together.

I worked as much as I could on my startup the first two years. I knew that I could have successful dates individually, but that I didn't have the bandwidth to sustain the followup interactions dating would require. I put off dating for those two years, and went the company eventually went bust I definitely regret putting my life on hold like that.

Eh, it's on medium.com. "Who is it for"... well it's just to rant or get some clicks.

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