Hacker News Reader

Comment by jseims | Hacker News Reader

Being married is one thing; having kids is another.

As an entrepreneur with two young children, I know it's hard to keep a balance.

The hard part isn't necessarily the limited number of hours. It's possible to build a successful startup while working 40 hours a week, provided you're really focused and not goofing around during those hours.

What's hard is many startups have a youth culture that glorifies in working all the time, though much of that time is drinking beer and playing foosball. That's great when you're 23. But I (and many others with kids) would much prefer a professional culture of focused, intense work from 10 AM to 6 PM.

View on HN

Exactly, Here is a theory, I think one of the reason for a lack of enterprise 2.0 startups is that people like you and me (I have 2 kids as well) can't do things like YC, and most enterprise startup ideas come from people working in enterprises for years, and suffering the daily grind of old, overpriced enterprise software.

Since many top talent are usually less inclined to work for gray boring enterprises, and prefer startups (Who wouldn't?), then they don't face the problems we "older" developers see every day. no problem to solve, less ideas, less enterprise targeted startups.

I think PG wrote about it somewhere regarding things he looks to fund. (http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html)

Solution? I have no clue... but a VC backed babysitter 2.0 startup might be a step in the right direction

Edit: "do things like YC" should read - "create and run startups", not YC in specific.

I'm not sure why there is such a focus on "going through" YC. In my opinion that isn't the difficult part at all (well getting accepted is ;)). Most people can sacrifice 3 months of their life and not see their loved ones. It is really only 3 months of your life. The bigger picture is a lot harder to balance. What happens after those 3 months? How do you run the startup while still maintaining a reasonable work-life balance?

If you can figure that part out then nothing should stop you from applying for YC.

Agree, though 3 months is not an option for me with my kids age (1 and 3) too much stuff I'll miss, and not sure my wife will be there when I get back.

But I agree, it's the years after probably, although I believe you can do more in 9 hours of balanced life than in 14 hours of hectic coding (just less reading HN, and writing just "good enough" code and not developing features that users don't really need, and hiring good people, can save a lot of time)

"The bigger picture is a lot harder to balance. What happens after those 3 months? How do you run the startup while still maintaining a reasonable work-life balance?"

My theory on how to maintain work-life balance after YC is that you have to try to create some semblance of it during YC as well, then turn the volume up afterwards. That can also help avoid the post-Demo Day postpartum crash that comes with pulling a 3 month stint of nothing but work.

So for us, that meant taking Saturdays off, like I mentioned in the article. And it's not just about not working, it's about planning out some kind of epic release and fun time, like going to Monterey for a concert or kayaking around the bay. I have to admit that I wasn't as good about that before YC - I would work until some kind of internal safety valve would blow a gasket and I was flirting with the crispy edges of burnout, then I'd crash uselessly until I could be productive again - and now I'm hoping I've learned a life skill that can power steady productivity for much longer than 3 months.

> Most people can sacrifice 3 months of their life and not see their loved ones. It is really only 3 months of your life.

Most people with kids live on the edge of a precarious childcare cliff. It's a marvel of logistics to allow both parents to keep their jobs as it is--3 months of one parent holing up would push the whole family over the edge of that cliff. What is your spouse going to do, take 3 months off work?

I didn't mean to make it sound easy. But running a business is difficult and that is only one problem to overcome. If you can't solve that problem for a pretty short amount of time then maybe it is not the right time to create the business.

After YC it is not like you can go home and do nothing. If anything things would get much more difficult. Especially if you raise money from investors.

A friend and I had several conversations around what a YC for grown-ups would look like. One of my ideas was it would look something like the National Guard. One weekend a month while maintaining your current employment, some benefits for families (vacation house to re-connect after a session), or something like that. But, whether investors would ever fund such a thing, probably not.

Count me in...

Its funny you say "for grownups" while more than half the people in YC were 27 years old or older - certainly adults out of school and doing all the things grownups do: marriage, kids, taking on debt to buy homes, etc.

I realize that. It was more a positioning statement to separate it from YC. There are lots of other YC like programs too. The idea being to identify talented people who may not feel comfortable managing their constraints within existing accelerators. More importantly, to your point, I don't think that's an attractive target group for investors.

Is there a way to have a culture that supports both? I currently enjoy the "youth culture" but am increasingly getting tired of certain aspects of it. I really do enjoy having fun with coworkers, but I am increasingly aware of the marginal benefits from doing this too much.

This is something I am increasingly concerned about, as I will probably have children in a couple of years.

The thing is, the entrepreneurs with children that I know are vastly more effective than (most of) those without. The additional focus required to successfully do both has made them much more discerning when it comes to how they use their time. But there is definitely a belief among my younger friends that people with children just aren't capable of the kinds of work that lead to awesomeness.

Exactly. Startup while married and no kids would be a walk in the park, at least in terms of not having enough time, certainly there are many other variables to building a company than time alone. But, kids, in particular when you exceed 2, in my experience, pretty much rules over any shred of time beyond 40 hrs/week.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com