How I'm Bootstrapping a Startup While Raising Three Kids | Hacker News Reader

How I'm Bootstrapping a Startup While Raising Three Kids

codusoperandi.com

134 pointsjayro37 comments

Very inspiring, OP. The little tips and tricks are always helpful, but what is best is getting us to think, "If he can do it, then so can I."

One giant question, though. You describe a life where you often squeeze in a few hours on your start-up here and there. This sounds like it would work rather well for repetitive tasks like stuffing envelopes, folding apparel, or answering emails. But what happens if you have trouble getting "into the zone" for writing software during your short window of opportunity.

I have found this to be my difficulty developing leading edge software. Finding time isn't always the biggest problem; getting creative is. It's tough to get creative. It's tougher to get creative when you have to right now and you only have 2 hours to work on it.

How do you handle that?

I used to think I needed long uninterrupted stretches of time to do good work. It turns out I was wrong. I'm working on a side-project now, putting in less than half an hour a day (but making sure to do it every day). Strangely enough I'm making better progress in many ways than when I had the luxury of spending many hours on side-projects.

I'm blogging on my progress, if anyone is interested: http://prehacked.com (read http://prehacked.com/pages/about-this-blog-53 to get an idea of what I'm working on).

>I'm working on a side-project now, putting in less than half an hour a day

Is that including thinking time? Do you have commuting time or some other time without responsibility for other people in which to think?

Using a Lisp dialect helps me pick up where I left off: http://ourdoings.com/2006-05-01

Sales/marketing seems to require extended effort though, or money.

Your comment is intriguing, but the link is broken.

Sorry, done manually from the phone. I will check the link after posting this time.

http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/2006-05-01

That's a really interesting question. What I've found is that when I'm obsessed with a project it tends to almost always be on my mind, so that when I sit down to work on it I generally have a very good idea of what I want to accomplish and how to go about it (or at least how to get started on it). And when I know I'm only going to have a limited amount of time to make progress then I really try to do as much mental prep as possible so that when I do sit down I can really do some damage. That said, there are times when I end up getting sucked into reading HN and accomplish very little. ;(

By the way, one quick trick I use to avoid wasting too much time on HN is to use the Instapaper bookmarklet to print out the articles in a condensed format to read later when I'm away from the computer.

I was thinking the same thing. I have two little ones - I've been a freelance programmer for a long time but only recently have I realized that I am actually a creative. Like a musician or writer, I don't get paid for typing away on my keyboard, I get paid for ideas. By and large.

This means I need time in my day where I do "nothing" - where my mind is at ease completely - it's surprising how well it works when you just give it a try. That hard problem you were trying to solve? An elegant solution will suddenly appear in your mind. It's like your mind works best when it can slave away in the background, and not be distracted by thoughts.

I am sure it's different for everyone - but despite the fact that we have to bill hourly, it's important to understand that insights have nothing to do with the number of hours spent staring at the screen.

So the answer to your question is simple - as long as there are periods where we can relax completely, that's where our best work gets done. Whether I stress out and frantically type for 2 hours, or relax my mind completely in whichever way that works best for me, both is work, and I propose the relaxing way is much more efficient.

It's a whole world view. Answer the question of how much can a programmer get done in 8 hours? Well - the answer can be anything from getting close to fixing a bug to writing the next hit web application.

A friend of mine started VC-backed company when his 3 kids were 2-4 years of age. That was several years ago and since then the company has grown to 400+ employees, millions of paying customers and went public with the market cap of over 500 mil. Call it an "old-school" start-up if you will.

His HowTo is nannies. That freed up lots of time without making him feel like he was neglecting or taking away from his children.

YMMV however, because many people simply do not accept the very idea of letting strangers care for children of a very young age (them being the formative years of the personality and for other reasons).

What's a little weird/bizarre is when kids cry upon seeing their parents, because it means they have to leave their nanny.

>His HowTo is nannies. That freed up lots of time without making him feel like he was neglecting or taking away from his children.

"How I'm Bootstrapping a Startup While Raising Three Kids"

Your friend is not raising those kids though is he? It sounds like the nannies are. The kids maybe are not being neglected but he is neglecting them.

People, it seems, sometimes don't care about raising their offspring just as long as someone does. To me that is really weird, why choose to have children if you're going to get someone else to raise them?

I am currently bootstrapping a startup (http://www.wellhubstudios.com) while working at another startup and have a 1 year old with another child on the way. Couple tips that I picked up along the way:

1. Patience. Building a company is a time-intensive process that can be frustrating when family is demanding a lot of your time. Just focus on the goal and slowly pick away at your giant todo list for launch.

2. Its Good enough. Sometimes it seems like things are not moving forward or moving forward at a glacial pace. At these times I try to switch gears and say to myself "whats here is good enough for V1".

3. Time Management. I work 8-5 at my job. Come home and hang out with the family from 5-10. Then work on my startup from 10-1 pretty much every night. This takes both discipline and the ability to handle being a bit sleepy.

I admire your stamina, but I do like the OPs approach better. Time is relative.

I know I can't work 16 hours a day - I can perhaps sit at a desk that long - or in an emergency production server fix meeting, which has happened - but not get good work done. At least not if it's every day. One thing or another is going to suffer - the day job, the family, or the startup.

Reading this feels like dejavu beside I'm responsible for 3 little kids (1, 2.5, 4). Having three of them instead of one is a bit more demanding, but not that different. My day looks very similar.

I'm bootstrapping a game (http://www.car-battle.com), it made $0 so far which doesn't make it easier, but working in such environment you have to be super-persistent to make it work. This is what I do.

What interested me in this was the mixture of the traditional and the modern:

- Traditional: You are the breadwinner, your wife has the primary housecare / childcare duties.

- Modern: You do your breadwinning from home and are self-employed instead of working for a company.

- Traditional: You and your wife recognize the importance of passive income.

- Modern: You both recognize that investments are no longer a reliable way to make passive income. Instead, you are working on a company / product / service (AppIgnite) that will create new wealth. [1]

[1] I'm not saying that the passive income is the ONLY reason you're doing this, or even the primary reason. But I'm sure an awareness of market changes factored in somewhere.

>Obviously, if you do the math $500 per day isn't a huge income for a family of three living in a relatively expensive area like Pasadena, CA

Just a little perspective, median income for a family of 5 in California is $66,106, so $500/day may not be huge but it's certainly large.

We're a family of 4 living on the equivalent of $50 a day, 60% of our income gets paid out on mortgage costs. We're not in Pasadena though.

Median income adjusted for purchasing power (based on Wikipedia figures) would be about half your quoted amount , $34000.

I can't quite imagine having equivalent of $250 a day. You must have a lot of savings.

Wow.

I would be happy if I could do even half the things simultaneously, that you have listed out in your post. (Quality time with wife + 3 Kids, Bootstrapped Startup, 3-4 Consulting Projects, Being to the gym 5-6 times a week, 2 podcasts per week, ...)

If we rewind a bit to when you were just starting out after college, were you pretty efficient and disciplined then as well? I am just curious whether self-discipline and efficiency can also be cultivated and improved upon drastically, later in life as well.

Thanks for writing this post. It inspired me to utilize my time more efficiently.

I was horribly inefficient when just getting out of college (I'm 26, 4 years out). I largely owe my improvement of work-life balance/awareness to my better-half; I think I'd still be struggling with it if I were single.

This is a generalization, but from what I can see, the same thing happens in grad-school students as in startups. People that are coming directly out of undergrad have less of a sense of work-life balance and how important and helpful it can be to your productivity and happiness.

this is a great post that adds a lot of great tips to the discussion for parents. it really moves the discussion forward. Thanks for writing it.

I agree that commutes, meetings and starbucks runs are out of the question for folks with limited time to dedicate to their startup.

I see people doing two 20 minute Starbucks runs a day and I'm like how can they waste 40 minutes a day/200 minutes a week/$50 a week on Starbucks.... then i realize they don't have to get home by 7:30 to put their kids to bed and wake up at 6am to feed them breakfast.

I'm uber efficient these days.... even my email list was designed to make my life more efficient.

I don't need to go to networking events, read blogs, recruit developers, do PR, do SEO or do any kind of social media or marketing.

I simply pull my thoughts together in 30-60 minutes and hit the send button. 20k+ folks get it in their email box, 250k get it on the web as folks discuss it and forward it around and 1,000+ responses wind up in my inbox.

Many of the responses I get are from entrepreneurs who want:

a) me to angel invest (so i get deal flow!) b) developers from outside of the major cities who want to break in to the internet industry ("well hello! please meet my Director of Technology who will fly you in for a recruiting/cult meeting") c) investors who want to hear about ThisWeekIn.com, LAUNCH.IS or Mahalo. d) press who want to re-run the piece e) partners who want to leverage Mahalo's 20m+ uniques.

Efficiency wins..... efficiency and leverage can be found anywhere--you just have to be open minded.

Working 5 hours a day on projects for clients, taking 15 minute breaks once an hour, and then working on the startup whenever there is time left after all that isn't really the same as creating a startup in a serious way.

It also sounds like the wife is home all day and either a freelancer herself or not working. Having full time child care available from a live in caretaker is not really the same as having to raise 3 kids on your own or with a full time working spouse.

Having full time child care available from a live in caretaker is not really the same as having to raise 3 kids on your own

I'm puzzled by your comment, because the author doesn't suggest those things are the same. It sounds like you're projecting onto him, since he's writing about what works for him.

The article is one in a series of discussions about whether it is possible, or well advised, to start up a company if one has small children at home. Children need child care, health insurance, time, and money to support them. This is a difficult situation for some one starting up a new company. It is much better if you are single and unmarried to take on the risk of creating a new business from scratch.

This particular gentleman's situation is that he has a full time high paying job and a stay at home wife. The start up is a hobby he does in his spare time. There is not much insight to be gained from this because it is self evident that if you have full time paying work and a stay at home spouse, how to take care of your children and support them is not a problem.

There are many scenarios under which starting up a company with small children at home presents serious challenges and this is what has been discussed much recently. This particular scenario, of being able to comfortably support a spouse to stay at home with the children because one is primarily employed in work that is not the start up, is not one of the scenarios in which children are a particular challenge to overcome.

My husband and I quit full time jobs to build our second startup, whilst also having two kids to raise (8 and 6 years old). I don't feel like it's hard at all. I'm pretty disciplined, so I guess that helps. Perhaps I also see the world differently. But overall we're happier, we spend more time with our kids than when we were in jobs, and life is great.

I would also point out that the 'family business' is nothing new. Sure it may be somewhat different when you're building a business to scale, but there are plenty of examples of family businesses where the parents work huge hours and are also raising kids. Heaps of examples come to mind where the parents are literally managing the store 6 or 7 days a week, and somehow looking after children as well.

If you see 'having a family' as a barrier then it will be a barrier. Personally, raising kids and building a startup has never been an 'either/or' choice. In fact, since I love my kids and also love building a company... nothing could be better than having a life where I get to do both.

Well said. I wanted to write the same concept, but you are more eloquent. There is an interesting effect when you have a company, the kids seem to pick up the business skills by osmosis. My children constantly surprise me with how much they know about my company.

Definitely a good point that suggesting what someone can and can't do is not necessarily a positive thing to do. However, using the term startup as a broad generalization for all entrepreneurial endeavors can mean different things to different people. There are certainly startups that can be juggled around with other projects and life priorities. However, I'm sure there are countless very successful startups that would not have succeeded had someone like the author juggled all these other priorities at the same time. Not all startups can be successful, and some require countless hours of busy work, coding, and other tasks that would be a detriment to a family lifestyle.

Dave McClure put it well in this video of why not to do a startup: http://vimeo.com/15799330

EDIT: I don't have enough life experience to know how efficient a person can be when they have a family and manage crazy work hours, but my opinion is that Calacanis wrote about what he thinks is optimal not REQUIRED.

One question: If you're a freelancer working remotely from home, why don't you move somewhere cheaper?

On latam most people live at $5 a day, you can live like a frikin' sultan with $500. Live there for six months at 2 hours of consulting work and finish AppIgnite, then return with the product done.

btw, I'm a super-fan of TechZing even when I got bad publicity there ;)

3 kids.

AND a wife. First (and most importantly) of all, you need to convince your partner it's the right option.

It's easy enough to talk about "geo-arbitrage" (or whatever Tim Ferris calls it) when you're single and unattached - it's another thing to uproot a family of five and move to another country.

If you can get to the point of both partners buying into the plan, then you need to consider things like schools, healthcare, appropriate housing for 5 people, etc. That's of course assuming you are eligible for a visa to live and work in the country you'd like to move to.

It's not impossible, but it's a lot harder when there are other people involved, some of whom depend on you for everything.

To be honest, for a family, simply moving a bit further away from the city to somewhere with a lower cost of living would probably deliver more utility for far less effort than changing countries.

I'm not sure where in latam you're thinking about, but at least in Brazil these numbers are way off. Yes, you can live with $500 a month, but you'd go without many luxuries such as internet connection, cel phone and so on.

Major cities (the largest 2 or 3) in Brazil have a cost of living very close to cheaper cities of the USA. If you move to smaller towns, you begin to deal with other issues (lack of infrastructure specially for kids) and so on.

but I'm talking $500 a day.

To me, this looks like a very big piece of why he can do this and many people are simply not able to make this kind of money: I charge $100 per hour, which means if I work 4-6 hours per day, five days per week, then we're in decent shape financially and I'll have enough time left over to make significant progress on AppIgnite.

If I could charge $100/hr, I could replace my current job with about 5 or so hours of consulting per week (or scale it up a bit to have a more lavish lifestyle/pay down some debt), and then be free to do whatever the heck I wanted the rest of the time.

You should subscribe to his podcast - http://techzinglive.com

It's a really fun tech podcast that is always one of the first things I listen to when a new one comes out. Just check out the list of recent interviews: Gabriel Weinberg, Derek Sivers, Jessica Mah, Patrick McKenzie, and more.

Based on the title, was fully expecting top comment to chastise you for child labor. Deeply disappointed.

> I'd like to point out that unlike Calacanis I don't feel comfortable suggesting to people what they can and can't do as I believe it all really depends on the individual and the context in which they're operating.

That's a key insight right there, most people will go around and tell others what they can not do based on the experience of what they themselves can or can't do, and then they automatically extrapolate to the rest of the world. The reverse also holds true.

Whatever works for you is something you will only know by trying and doing, nobody can tell you what you can or can not do.

> Taking the kids to the gym is probably where I gain the most leverage of the day because it's a kill three birds with one stone, triple-jump move.

Very clever!

> Also, you know all the time that most employees and on-site contractors spend in meetings or other such unproductive organizational activities, well I engage in none of that.

Haha, score one for all the guys and girls that work from home. I try to avoid meetings like the plague, though I do have an 'office' in an IRC chat running. It's where I gather with everybody that I work with and where you can dump questions or have a few minutes of 'watercooler' talk.

> Another thing is that we keep our expenses pretty low and don't tend not to live very extravagantly.

Another winning quote. People that freelance sometimes fall in to the trap of adjusting their lifestyle upwards when the money is coming in quickly, but can't scale back when it does not. The safe approach is to stay low to the ground and be frugal all the time.

Once your saving account is nice and fat and you've been consistently performing at a certain level you could consider raising your monthly allowance (a bit!), if you feel the need to do so. For myself, I keep our personal expenses to an absolute minimum.

> Another circumstance that allows me to pursue a startup is that my wife and I have figured out a very clear division of labor and separation of concerns.

Clarity and openness are another key element in both a relationship and running a business. Having things clear is going to make sure there are no underwater time-bombs too.

What a super article, bookmarked and I'll re-read it again in a couple of days, lots of it applies to my situation directly and I'll try to get as much mileage from it as I can squeeze out of there.

One key insight that is not spelled out here is that you seem to be living a very regular life, and I suspect that that structure helps you to optimize what you get out of a day.

Thank you very much for writing this all up, (you even found time for that!), it is certainly inspiring.

Cool, I like what I see OP.

One comment: AppIgnite looked like APPL or AAPL (Apple) on first glance, since 'l' and 'L' can look pretty similar on some fonts.

That said, all the best!

Thank god. Finally a startup role model I really can aspire to.

As father to two cute toddlers, This overtime ramen stuff is totally unobtainable.

Thanks!

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