One of you works a job that provides income and benefits for both of you, while the other works on a startup. Assuming most of what you need is a time investment, this is an approach that works for a lot of households to bootstrap.
Higher startup costs make it tougher though.
The same is true for other franchisee's we've met (1 remains the breadwinner). If you bought into an existing one that already generates revenue, then sometimes both spouses work there full time. But that means you need to have had $$$ in the first place.
We know of one franchisee who's wife is a stay at home mom. He quit his job to start one...less than a year with slow growth, he closed the center and went back to a traditional salaried job. He didn't pick a good location for exponential growth, but IMHO he had enough steady growth and would have been profitable if he could stick around for another few months.
The wasted potential economic energy in
this country is a tragedy of colossal proportions.
Now hypothetically lets imagine for the sake of argument we've a safety net of the likes of somewhere on the spectrum between France and one of the Scandinavian countries.
All else equal, do you think the American entrepreneurial dynamism you see now would still be around if we had one such welfare state-lite?
Or do you think people would grow lackadaisical? Have there been studies on this sort of thing?
I'm not implying that its necessarily bad but this comes up a lot in discussions of UBI and such. Tangentially, just last week there was a discussion on how labor laws make life difficult for startups in France.[1] The discussion there makes you wonder perhaps the issues surrounding what actually spurs the indomitable entrepreneurial instinct is more complex than it seems on the surface.[2]
[1]
Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There? (nytimes.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169314
[2]
It is "easier" to start a business in the US, but it is riskier because of the general weakness of the social safety net (healthcare, social helps, free childcare, etc.).
The extreme downvoting probably reflect the affluent upbringing of a large portion of the HN community.
For me, many of the risks I took to get to this point would've involved either bankruptcy or my death if they had failed. When I talked to my coworkers on how they feel people should rise up the ladder, they didn't seem to get that the people that made it simply had a good roll of the dice.
For example, Bill Gates had a solid financial backing when he left Harvard: http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/
> [Bill Gates' Great-Grandfather] Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III.
Bezos' parents kicked money into what would become Amazon:
> The first initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, and they invested a large fraction of their life savings in what became Amazon.com
> After [Musk's parents] divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna. One of their homes was in Waterkloof, a leafy suburb of Pretoria that was popular with foreign diplomats.
> Wanderlust ran on both sides of the family. On holidays, Errol [Musk's Dad] and his kids would travel, he said: to Europe, Hong Kong, throughout the United States. Or they’d take the plane to Lake Tanganyika, where Errol had a stake in an emerald mine. Elon would later get his own pilot’s license, but he no longer has time to fly.
> While wealthy South Africans typically hired maids and gardeners, Errol decided that his children would do chores and cook their own food, taking shifts.
Michael Dell: http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ca-Ge/Dell-Michael.ht...
> In 1984, as a first-year college student in Austin, Texas, Michael Dell borrowed $1,000 from his parents to start a computer accessories business.
To put this in perspective, in 2015 less than 30% of Americans have $1000 in their savings: https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings-account/62-pe...
Kalanick's parents: https://www.recode.net/2017/5/27/15705290/bonnie-kalanick-mo...
> From teaming over complex science projects like building a real electrical transformer to giving him his first experience programming computers, [Kalanick's dad] had been the one to bring home early computers for his tech-curious son to fiddle with.
I don't entirely understand why people do this. It just seems pitiable. Rather than learn from others, people seem more interested in trying to look for reasons why they can't achieve.
If you don't have to do anything else with that money.
My parents couldn't have spared 1000 bucks just because when I was younger.
Musk grew up wealthy. He's the child of rich white south africans.
This is why pointing to these people is futile because not only did they have large advantages that many others did not, but they are also largely the exception to the norm. It's the survivorship bias in action.
And in that regard it's not really an economic issue as much as a social issue. People that come from families with no value for education, or individuals that themselves don't take their education seriously are obviously going to struggle. But those actions are something beyond socioeconomic reasons - as the same is true of somebody born into a rich family - though granted in that case the individual will obviously have more resources to rely on to subsidize his failure.
While I'm sure your circumstances may have dictated such, I'm not really understanding what you're talking about with such a high cost of failure. When I failed, and I did, it simply meant it was time to get a job and work myself up to be able to take shot #x. When one 'sticks', you're set and can use that to enable your future shots.
Years ago I did some real estate deals together with a few guys from rich families. The first deal went bad leaving me with debt that lasted more than 10 years to pay off. The other guys got more money from family, did a few more deals that went well and are now successful businessmen. When you don't have money you often can't afford to fail in the same way wealthy people can. The consequences are much more severe.
My bottom was having very little money in my name, with parents that were poor and disabled as a result of the hardships of being fishermen. I had barely enough to take care of my family and go to college (with financial aid) as a result of other very personal circumstances. Even then, I had to make a choice.
I could either spend some of that money on my failing health and never graduate from college, or focus on my education and hope I can fix it later. I went with the latter. Financial aid can only go so far when you're one medical issue away from disaster.
When I finally got a career I had to have multiple rotting and infected teeth extracted because I couldn't afford to get them fixed prior. My family had a history of bad dental issues and I managed to hit it hard.
This is what I mean by the bottom. If my dental issues had gotten worse, then I would've been screwed. This is the reality for a lot of people that grow up in poverty. It doesn't necessarily matter if we can get financial aid when there are other circumstances stopping us, affecting our education or worse.
There were no universities near me that offered treatment and believe me, that was one of the first things I tried. You were lucky that you had the opportunity to get that free treatment; an option I didn't have. I'm sorry your parent had to deal with cancer, thankfully that's one way my parents have been lucky so far in.
And there is no reason to be sorry for anything I went through. As bizarre as it is, I would not have had my life any other way and I doubt even my parent would have. No doubt as a part of the cancer it caused them to reevaluate their life and after I had gone off to college they started taking night classes at a community college for nursing, and succeeded and have now worked their way up to very comfortable middle class, starting with little more than a high school degree in their late 30s. Also caused them to catch the Jesus a bit hard, but hey if it completes their life then more power to them.
You don't find these reasons compelling because you can't seem to understand that a lot of options are entirely circumstancial. For people that even do have the option to take a bus, you're effectively asking them to lose their job or stop taking care of their family for possibly an entire day. An option a lot of people don't have when they live paycheck to paycheck.
The beautiful thing about this country is that there are practically infinite possibilities and opportunities. Obtaining them can often involve a good deal of blood, sweat, and tears - but they're there. That's the thing that I find frustrating - sayings like 'when opportunity knocks' are idiotic. Opportunity doesn't knock. It's something that must be aggressively sought out, captured, and then chased after once it escapes which it frequently will - like tricky little bastard it is. People seem to believe that others just have things happen for them, or that they were born into fortunate circumstance. In some cases that's true. In the vast majority, it is not. Things are not given, they are taken.
Anyway, I feel ya. I lucked out on my teeth but I didn't see a dentist for 15 years and when I did I had a dead tooth and some root canals to be done.
No, it's just hardcore techno-libertarian insanity.
[1] https://blog.approvedindex.co.uk/2015/06/25/map-entrepreneur...