Scott McNealy: To have a successful start-up, be careful who you marry | Hacker News Reader

Scott McNealy: To have a successful start-up, be careful who you marry

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14 pointspsogle8 comments

I...don't really like this article, frankly.

Other than being fairly light on information to begin with, the title brings up (what I believe is) the least important part of the article. I can't really speak to being married and trying to run a start-up (still in college), but from what I've read, it is entirely possible. The major thing is having kids -- not being married, or even who you are married to (at least, not nearly as much). If the "married" thing is a metaphor for some of the other rules, such as #2, then they're really stretching it.

I do agree with numbers 1 through 4, though they really could have beefed up the article with some more information and detail. For example, one sentence for #3 gets the point across, but leaves me hanging a bit.

On my earlier note though, can anyone speak to being married/having kids and trying to...start...a start-up? I'm curious what the experience is like, as opposed to being single and/or just having a girlfriend.

I’m part of a team of 3 guys with an idea, at prototype stage. With a wife, 3 kids and a mortgage, the first concern if/when we all commit full-time, is continuing to keep up with all of these responsibilities. My wife’s supportive of what we want to achieve, but we’ll see what happens if/when reality bites. It’s an extra hurdle to leap, but it’s manageable.

I think that the advice "be careful who to marry" can be inserted to virtually any "bullet points" article. ;o)

This was discussed to HN before - one usually can't learn anything significant from bullet points blog posts (like this one).

The biggest issue is that at a startup your whole brain is focused on what you're building. If your personal life gets involved, you'll want to make sure to make time to do other things. You don't actually want to talk about your startup all the time.

If you work 12 hour days at a startup, you probably don't have time for much else at all.

If you're a normal person who thinks that is unsustainable, you can find time for a normal life along with working on your company. That's the case whether your obsession is your kid or RockBand.

Maybe I'm the exception the proves the rule.

Ask the TipJoy team.

Look for the counter-intuitive idea and go after it.

The hard part is, you have to be right.

I thought this was going to be about cofounders...

I expected it to be about the startup marrying a technology stack (i.e. committing to Microsoft products, or Apple, or open source, or Sun, for that matter)

I agree with the post saying it was light on content. It would have been nice if he used some great open source technology to record his talk and put it online. :/

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