Is It Possible to Be Both a Founder and a Daddy? | Hacker News Reader

Is It Possible to Be Both a Founder and a Daddy?

techinasia.com

40 pointsvincvinc42 comments

I'm 30, I have 4 kids (the youngest one only being 1 month old) and my startup, Codeable (https://codeable.io), is only a couple of months from profitability (my gut feeling according to current growth). I still get the stuff done, get to play with my kids and even have some time for hobbies and friends. I think it's all about balance (and an understanding spouse to remind you of priorities every once in a while).

I have many friends who don't have kids and always say "the time isn't right for kids". Well guess what, if you keep thinking this way, the time will never be right, it's all about going out of your comfort zone, as you are with being a successful entrepreneur. They also think kids somehow limit you in some way, but to me, it's quite the opposite, they give me new perspective, more determination and of course a ton of laughs!

Amen. The thing I found is they changed my working hours. It used to be all day, every day. This led to important stuff getting pushed back because I had so many hours, I figured I'd get it done at some point soon.

3 children later, it's 8.5 hours on weekdays only. It changed my working practises so that the moment I sit down at the computer it's the top priority task right now and everybody be damned until I need my first long break.

I also find myself asking the question when someone is looking for free help/products "do I want to spend time helping this stranger or spend time with my children?" It focuses my attention on the money, but makes you kinda selfish towards your family, in that regard.

Wow. This thread has altered my thinking.

I am married and an entrepreneur for the last two years. My wife and I have been putting away expanding the family thing for while, basically waiting for our startup to reach either profitability or a level of funding where I could draw a salary.

How did you guys manage the expenses? Were you drawing a salary or had sufficient revenues to support yourself when your wife was off work/due?

You don't have to actually wait until after you have all the money you need.

It's much easier to have kids when you are young, and as long as you have prospects for income you'll be fine. If you wait till after you are perfectly set it will be too late.

Realistically - if your startup failed, could you get a job? If yes, then there is no need to wait, you are set for money.

There's hardly any expense with one baby, all you need is a stroller and a car seat ($1k combined), you'll get plenty of clothes (as gifts) from relatives and breastfeeding comes free :)

So if you and your wife manage now, you'll manage then just fine.

This touches on a lot of points I believe in as well. Nothing worthwhile is easy. I have 3 kids, a wife and a dog. I'm involved with two ~3 person start ups and work about 10-11 hours a day, 6 days a week.

The dead reply to this by davidjgraph appears to be hellbanned, but I don't see any reason why. His previous comments aren't, and his submissions are all clean as well. What's going on?

Time for a game of spot the differences!

"Even with the hectic work demands that I face on a daily basis, I’m still able to be very involved in the lives of my wife and two young daughters."

"Each week, my daughters and I have a “daddy-daughter” night where the three of us go to dinner." (whoah, a whole evening per week?)

"For me, this means setting aside time to relax with my family and give them my full, undivided attention."

"I’m online 24/7 and always checking email."

So I guess the answer to the headline is, if I'm to follow the article, either "no" or "for some definitions of 'daddy'"?

I was a much better parent before I had kids, the old saying goes. It proves itself out every day on sites like Reddit and Hacker News.

The description you gave above sounds like any working parent anywhere. If the answer is "No" to a startup, then it would have to be "No" to being a simple employee as well.

Both I and my wife work and while I may not have a high-flying career with million-dollar IPO's and jet-setting across the world with VC's (and write humblebrag blogs on how to start half a dozen startups and 'still' get to gasp have dinner with my children once a week), I can objectively say that I'm (compared to how it's described in the article - I have nothing to go on but that) much more involved with my children than this guy. Look, everybody is entitled to live his life the way he sees fit, but don't go around claiming you've found such a great work/life balance (and that you're such a great parent) and then have it turn out to be like described. On weekends, I go to the zoo with my children, I don't drag them across the world under the pretense of 'they get to experience so much' to leave them with complete stranger babysitters in hotels across the world, and pretend that waiting times in airport terminals with them is quality parenting time.

I think it's generally never a good rhetorical strategy to argue how much better a parent you are than someone else.

Well it's true that I lose pathos (and ethos), and generally come across as a dick, but in my experience and congruent with this site's target audience, readers here give logos a disproportionate value anyway.

And maybe I did make the wrong choice when I compared him to myself, it's not about me - but the GP implied an argument about my lack of experience and hence reduced value of my statement. I should just stop arguing on the internet all together, really - it's a no-win situation.

Not entirely: I enjoyed reading your comments here (and I agree with them).

It's a warm welcome amidst all the American 'work work work work work life balance' culture that's prevalent on HN (for understandable reasons, after all, most of HN is American).

There's no point in telling each other all the time how you can't do a startup (or good/interesting software work in general) unless you put in 70 hour weeks for two years straight, so I like reading the occasional counter argument, such as yours here.

I have a start-up company as well as a 1 yr old (as well as a wife, which also is an important commitment.) What I noticed after my child was born was that I was even more focused at work and more focused on effective triage to ensure that my time is spend on the most valuable aspects of the business. The strange thing is that as I've gotten more important commitments in life I've been more efficient in business, probably because my triage filter is so specific now and I'be been able to effectively delegate.

My start-up has the advantage that we make money (i.e. profitable) thus I can afford to delegate. If I was single and my company had no money I think that a child both in terms of expenses (they aren't cheap) as well as time would be more problematic.

I full life for myself includes kids and start-ups. I don't think it is an either/or choice.

One is hard. Two is four times as hard. Be wary of two...

It is part of our plan... :-)

Except of course that most historical businesses outside of the mobile/social circle jerk have been started by people who had families.The take-home point here is you wont get funding unless you new VC owners can be sure of exclusivity on your life.

The problem with valley funding is its basically reliant on the tails of the distribution,without massive IPOs buoyed by hundreds of millions of users(not revenue!) it is not profitable.The truth is there is a lot of opportunity for businesses which dont go webscale. Here is an idea,find a business as a consultant which has an opportunity in a growth industry (They still exist in a recession). Deliver your projects,go to meetups and parties. Take on larger projects from your customer and get some staff. Then look for new customers,building a business which has revenue in the low millions becomes possible and they if you want "webscale" you can bootstrap it yourself.The return on this business would be a joke to a VC but to you would be life changing.

Wow, all I can say is that it is wonderful to read a "can you do a startup and be a parent?" article that is not about MOMS. (Although since the original post didn't mention anything about school responsibilities, doctor's appointments, bedtime, or birthday parties, I'm assuming that all that is done by his wife.)

Does being daddy mean your child is raised by baby sitters?

The answer is simple: absolutely! This is clear based on the amount of feedback in this thread alone. Circumstances are different depending on who you talk to but it can clearly be done, and without all the "help" and perks this guy mentions.

I've seen it many times myself first-hand and now I'm living it. I'm in the process of launching my new startup (www.promoter.io) right now with a 2.5 year old son and I just came from being an early employee/executive at another fast moving startup (www.appfog.com).

Oh, and at the same time, my son is battling leukemia. So often times I'm doing some work from the doctors office (~3-5 times per week without fail) or from the hospital.

It can be done, it's simply a matter of how you prioritize I guess.

So this founder managed to achieve a degree of success at this that most have not. Good for him.

I'd rather hear more from the larger majority of struggling founders with families, because chances are I have more in common with them. What's keeping them from succeeding and how did he avoid the things holding them back?

I suspect a zero-sum game is hiding in the relationship between this guy his non-founder employees, because I very rarely read about founders with young kids helping their employees in their struggle to raise a family under startup conditions.

There are family-friendly startup anecdotes out there, but family-friendly startups surely aren't the norm.

There are many more "founder dads" than people assume. When you become "baseball dad" you will find out that about 15% of all parents in the league are entrepreneurs of some kind. And there is additional 30% of them talking about starting something (from cop trying to start security service to some quite complex biotech stuff).

It seems like when your kids are older than 7 then the probability of being entrepreneur increases as kids get older.

Completely unscientific but make sense.

I started my career the year my kids were born.

I started my startup their freshman year of college.

The years between? Corporate 9-5 jobs (technically, I'm still doing that, bootstrapping with a day job). It wasn't so much the time as the stability. I knew what my hours would be, and what my income would be. But with the kids basically adults now and able to care for themselves if needed, I feel much more free to take risks and do extensive off-hours work while ignoring them.

As a plus on this, my startup idea is derived from my long career in enterprise software. It's a much more solid concept and more solid market than the sort of monetize-pictures-of-cats stuff that seems to infect young developers. I'm working on a real problem that I understand really well, for customers who have money and are willing to spend it. I'm far more likely to succeed now than I would have been 15 years ago.

IMHO - not w/o sacrificing some of the most critical time you'll spend with your children, or without a world-class support system -- but even then, I question whether it is worth it. I tried and gave up. I'm much happier that I did. I'll revisit it at another time.

My first though when I saw this question was "Please let the law of headlines be wrong". I'm a co-founder with two babies. Its hard but not impossible, having an understanding and supportive spouse is imperative.

I'm not technically a "founder", however I am the first employee of a startup having joined from the start and I've bled through stressful times nearly as much as the 2 founders did, pulling 14-hours work days, answering to production alerts at 1 am, freaking out when we couldn't generate revenue, working my ass off to get something working, etc...

I am also the dad of a 3-year old. My son is almost the same age as the startup I'm working on.

At times it is tough, luckily I have an understanding wife. And my son is one of the biggest reasons I get up in the morning.

Being a parent is like a roller-coaster (much like working on a startup). You're sad and stressed when your child gets sick. And a child also gives you some of the greatest joys in life you can have - there's nothing like coming home after a hard day, only to find your child smiling at your return, giving you a big hug or a kiss, never missing a day to express how much he/she loves you.

There is a difference between being a parent and working on a startup. Both have highs and lows, however while working on a startup, in stressful times one tends to adopt a fuck-it attitude. Like, if it doesn't work out, that's OK, you learn from experience and then you move on, so there's no tragedy if your startup fails. Not so with a child ... you only have one shot to raise him right, to provide a good education, to make him happy and balanced and that child becomes your biggest reason d’etre, regardless of how passionate you are about other things, like software development or your startup.

So that's why my son is probably the biggest reason for why I get up in the morning.

Burn-outs for example are a non-issue for me. I've been burned-out before and it's hard to explain for why this can no longer happen - but the gist is my son is like a mirror of me, so his well-being functions like a benchmark. When I'm sad, then he's sad too and I can't fake happiness in front of him (children have a sixth sense about that), so whenever that happens, it's time to evaluate whatever I'm doing wrong and cut out on the stress. You see, I simply can't afford to burn-out, as my son depends on me. Same issue I have with catching colds for example - I used to catch colds quite frequently, but ever since my son was born, my immune system seems to have strengthened quite a bit. I'm not joking, it's as if my body knows that I need to be stronger and acts accordingly.

So yes, it's possible. If you feel the need to be a parent and you have a spouse that agrees with you, then postponing it is going to be the singly most stupid thing you'll ever do. That's because (1) children are worth it and (2) when it comes to having children, you only have a limited window of opportunity and before you know it, you'll be too old and even with all medical advances in this field, it's better to have them while you're young.

I agree with your post. I also disagree with PG's stance on needing to have a partner, someone to help you get through the tough times of a start-up. I have partners - a wife and four kids. They keep me going during tough times because I could not bear to let them down. They also keep me sane, because as you stated there is nothing quite like a shitty day at the office followed up by a young child that acts like your return from work is Christmas morning. Somehow when they exclaim "Daddy!" when I open the door, it makes most of the work problems instantly forgotten. This has a positive effect on my ability to deal with workplace stress.

I have also found it useful for framing priorities in my head, and even negotiating deals with suppliers. Having kids keeps my priorities straight. When I think about spending time or money, I think about the impact on my kids. I have told suppliers (I have a manufacturing company) "Every dollar I save, is another dollar I can put in my kids college fund". It has become a useful framework for negotiation. Every business trip is compared to time I won't be able to spend with the kids.

My wife got tenure and published her first book while working on a strict 40 hour schedule when we had our first kid. Now that we have four kids (9,6,3, and 2 months) she is working a strict 35 hour week and working on her second book. I find it an inspiration of what get done if you focus and have four little constraints running around.

Plenty of work-a-day entrepreneurs manage to be parents and founders at the same time. Why is it harder in the tech industry? Are technologists just less competent at parenting in general?

Entrepreneurs are rule breakers, and "no startups when you have kids" seems like yet another rule that can be broken (assuming it even is a rule).

Yes. I'm a father and own multiple businesses/startups. All you need is to get organized.

There is a TED talk (I don't remember the presenter's name, talk date, or anything else) where the presenter basicaly asks:

"When your children grow up and asks you why you didn't follow your dreams, do you want to answer - It was because of you?"

At the same time, yes, it's very hard.

Betteridge's law of headlines just kicked in again.

How so? You can do anything you want. This idea that parents can't found companies is just a platitude that childless entrepreneurs (usually very young ones I might add) use to justify their insane work schedules. The belief that this is the only way to do it protects their egos from the thought they may be working their way to an early grave.

The uncomfortable truth is that 100 hours a week won't guarantee you success, and 20 hours a week may be sufficient to build a serious business. Every extra hour your work is multiplying the base value of your idea, expertise, connections and staff, but it is not going to magically cross some threshold of success when you put yourself on a perpetual deathmarch. If anything, I think those 70th, 80th, 90th hours tend to have dramatically diminishing returns, and time away from the office helps refuel creativity and lead to more intelligent decision making and recognition of opportunities.

Of course that's all just my opinion, but one thing I'm sure of: no successful entrepreneur got there without challenges, and they certainly never got there listening to the million reasons the rest of us said it wasn't possible.

I think it's a rare businessman in the startup world who can be successful at only 20 hours a week. Sure, there are some out there, but I'd say not many!

If you are that person, whatever you do, don't let on or everyone will crowd into your marketplace! :-)

This guy is funded by Sequoia and gets to take his daughter along with him on business trips, and hire sitters that the hotel finds (who must be expensive).

There are founders and then there are Founders. There are people who've been recognized by VCs as social equals, and who are real executives within VC-istan but still found companies; then there are the long-shot "let's see if this kid makes a miracle happen" founders on audition.

He's in the first set. He's already made it. His investors are OK with him taking his daughter on business trips, which they wouldn't be if he were some unestablished schmuck like most of us. They'd never be okay with paying for the airfare. So for him the answer is "Yes". But if you're trying to break into VC-istan, I'd say "No". It's not only the hours and travel, but also the income volatility and low wages. Of course, there are lots of businesses outside of VC-istan for which different rules apply.

This is the second time I've seen you claim on HN that it's impossible to simultaneously be a company founder and a new parent. This will be the second time I'll tell you that's just not true. Plenty of early-stage founders have young kids. My kids are 13 and 11, and I was a founder when (a) both of them were born and (b) again before they both started school while my wife Erin was working.

This thread is full of other people who have done similar things.

The problem I have with your comments about starting companies and parenting is not that it discourages new parents from considering starting a company, but that it once again posits that tech startup founders are an oppressed class. But consider raising a kid while working full time cleaning offices. Or as a construction worker. We sometimes sound like we actually believe that only the wealthy in this country successfully raise kids, but we obviously must know that isn't true at all.

[edited to depersonalize the response; sorry]

Amen on the horseshit. My co-founder at my last company had 3 kids under 5, and his wife also worked at a demanding job. He was aces.

If anything, I think being a parent made him more focused, better at time management. Young, first-time founders tend to see "work more hours" as the solution to a lot of problems, even when the right answer is something else entirely. He was great at saying, "No, that isn't worth doing," or finding clever ways to solve problems. A lot of his product ideas came out of the time he spent after putting the kids to bed, and I think having the break plus the quiet time away from the office was great for his creativity.

It was also an advantage in recruiting. I could honestly tell engineers that we didn't believe in working stupid hours. And that engineers with kids would be able to have dinner with their families, because that's what the CEO did himself.

I said that if you're trying to break into VC-istan when not yet established, you probably can't do that while raising kids. I said nothing about starting a company (possibly as a side project that turns into a lifestyle business) in general.

Again, this is the problem with your "VC-istan" term. I think you should stop using it, because it's helping you slink out of debates that you'd be better off losing. I'm sure there's some definition of "VC-istan" for which entry is foreclosed for new parents, but if you're referring to "first externally funded Silicon Valley startup", you're wrong.

A comment he made on the article:

> In fact, twice we actually had negative cash (ie, far more debt owed to the bank than cash) and struggled to even make payroll or cover rent. At one point we had to layoff over half of our employees and make payroll by taking an advance out on a credit card – that was just before my wife gave birth.

I guess being a wealthy founder with a family is a sound idea, but being employed by one, not so much.

A survey I think worthy of consideration-

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22687870/most-startup...

People in this industry -- moreso than any other, it seems -- often have some need to project their own lot as the ideal way to be in the business. If you're 20-ish and childless, well that's just the bestest way you ever could be, am I right? And so on.

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