Ask HN: How to balance a full time job, family and founding a startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to balance a full time job, family and founding a startup?

17 pointscanxerian25 comments

Hey HN,

I'm a software engineer by day, father to a newborn and burning with passion for my startup.

What advice can you give to help me manage all three?

Any recommendations for tools and services to automate typical early startup tasks would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks :)

When I was a kid, my dad started a business. He was very good at it, and the business was very successful. He was constantly working though. He would bring work home, it would cover the kitchen table. When he wasn’t working, he was absolutely exhausted. If he wasn’t working, he was sleeping. He was not only working for the business, but also running the business.

The amount of time that I spent with my dad dwindled to very little. Not to mention my siblings. I wish he’d spent more time with me. (It’s worth noting that he had other issues that contributed to our relationship).

I would treat your startup in this context as another newborn, but one from a different partner. It will require a substantial amount of time, money, and attention like your current newborn needs, but is under a different roof. Your co-parent of your newborn can’t necessarily also parent your other “newborn”, so you need another partner to step in.

Stepping away from the analogy for a moment, I (respectfully) doubt that your startup will be as important as your family. And as most any parent will tell you, the time with your baby will fly by and you will not believe how fast it goes. Prioritize your family over your work.

Really insightful reply, thanks for taking the time.

It's good to be reminded that there only 24 hours in a day

Realistically, the only one of the three people actually regret if they fail at is being a father - so I would honestly make sure you don't make excuses to sacrifice time on this.

Not saying you cant do the rest. Failing faster will be better than any productivity tips - it will reduce the period where your splitting between day-job & startup. As if the latter is successful you'll need to ditch the former pretty quickly.

Very true. Completely agree.

The answer, is, do not.

The more you want to get balance, you'll get nothing.

Make a priority, what's more important then execute it. Take break, switch task then comeback with the loop.

You can't have it all. You'll have to choose what's most important to you, and sacrifice the rest.

hello,

idk, this might not be the most "popular" opinion ... especially here on HN, but imho.

keep the stable job and start to appreciate your family - especially your newborn child.

time flies, and you never get back the time you are missing out with your growing child - ever!!

and this is much more rewarding than getting some stupid startup off the ground - and be serious to yourself: statistically you won't have a lot of success anyhow ;))

just my 0.02€

But this time it'll be different.. (nervous laugh )

Don't.

You should choose your priorities.

Founding a startup is more than a full-time job. Your current job is a full-time job. I don't have experience with kids, but I heard they're quite some work.

In short: choose two out of three, and even then, expect to make some serious sacrifices.

Either do the full time job, or raise money and do the startup. Don't do both.

Thank you

I’m not convinced almost anyone does this successfully. The people founding startups are able to do so because they have a big enough safety net to obviate a need for full-time employment. Sometimes this is from savings or luck from a previous job, but anecdotally it most often stems from inheriting money from rich families.

Realistically the only way I was able to do it was being laid off which forced me to jump in. I had a savings and a wife who believed in me (the savings has helped her belief hah) Family is a no-compromise #1 priority for me under any and all circumstances. I don’t think it is possible for most people to do all three. At Berkeley we had a saying “you can have 2/3 of either: good grades, a social life, and sleep”. This feels like a similar 2/3. Unless your job is easy enough where you can get it done in 1-2 hours and spend the rest on your startup.

How much time did you have before your savings would run out and how long did it take before your business was earning enough to cover basic living expenses?

I could go for a while, at least a year. Business still in R&D phase, but I’m not trying to build the next tiktok so that’s ok. :) best of luck whatever you try to do

Here’s some suggestions from my recent experience: - hire night nurse a few times a week to catch up on sleep - hire nanny for day time - SNOO Bassinet was a game changer with the baby sleeping 10+ hours - wake up at 4:30am every day and work on startup BEFORE your day job. No one is awake to bother you. Pure focus.

Sleeping 10+ hours!!! That's am achievement, well done

Yes, SNOO was fantastic. Expensive but worth every penny for our sanity.

I am in similar situation. I don’t want to pile up extra work but if you want to chat up sometime on how things are, I am happy to chat. I’ve been looking for people in similar situation so it doesn’t feel like a crazy dream

Hey maddynator, it'd be great to chat, thanks for offering! What's the best way to contact you?

Know that it is possible to do it, lots of people do, and it doesn't require you to be superhuman!

Thank you :)

You're welcome!

No two situations are the same, and mine is not quite the same as yours, but I certainly wonder at times how I made ends meet etc!

Being reflective and considering these things up front rather than just reacting after the evnt, as you are, does help too.

So, you've done this?

Sounds like survivor bias. Doesn't seem like there's enough hours in the day.

Care to site some examples with testimonies from kids that feel like they're getting enough attention and care from their parent that's doing these things?

I have kids, now teens, and I have been running start-ups since long before they were born, and sometimes financed those start-ups by working fairly full-time for clients alongside.

I started my first business before uni, and at uni I regularly worked 18h days and had people work from my room during the day. There was a lot of hard work at times. Maybe a difference was that I put off having kids until quite late, so while things weren't easy, I had a glimpse of stability and agreed with my partner that we could cope!

I do know that I'm not a superhero.

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