I also plan to start a family in a couple of years, so I'd like to find a stable job with good work-life balance and nice benefits for my family.
So, what things should I look for to know if a start up job will be stable? Have good life work balance, and good benefits?
1) You know founders personally or worked with them before 2) You know somebody who is working in the startup That way you can have first-hand info and get pretty reliable feeling on how things are working.
If that is not an option, you can of course evaluate the available data - company size (the bigger it is, the more stable it is probably) etc.
But I think at this point it is pretty much a lottery also - you just won't know for sure until you start. Things can differ a lot in different teams and it matters who you work directly with.
The same happened to us when hiring - somebody may look great during the interviews, but then when you start working together the problems emerge. And then you feel "how is it possible I haven't realized this before?".
The same with the founders - from the outside they can sound very convincing and confident about what they do, but in the inside it might be a totally different story.
Hope this was somewhat helpful! At the end of the day, you can always try something and if doesn't work change it, I believe that is still a better option than staying put somewhere where you don't feel content or challenged enough.