Launching a start-up and having a family life: It’s possible | Hacker News Reader

Launching a start-up and having a family life: It’s possible

entrepreneur.venturebeat.com

92 pointspeter12333 comments

To be perfectly honest, you got to ask my ex-wife about this.. I learned this the hard way unfortunately. Before starting a venture, make sure the foundation of your couple and family are strong. It takes a LOT of commitment, patience, energy just to get yourself started. Imagine that you have to invest as much on the personal level too (if not more). If you don't, your partner/wife will resent you. I know it's hard, but always try to balance things out. Time management is a key.

Edit: I am now where I wanted to be professionally, it took me more than a year of hard work, sleepless night juggling between a fulltime job, my ventures, and divorce documents.. I am 'successful', but no one to share it with :(

I sympathize as it looks like I'm headed down the same road. I look at it this way, you can at least "start all over" again from a relationship point of you.

My clock has been ticking for 3 years and not sure if the hard work will pay off but I won't trade what I do for anything else.

Sometimes finding the right person is just as hard (or harder) than being successful in a startup.

Very true.

As a message of hope from what I learned, I just wanted to put it out there for any entrepreneurs that went through a divorce or any major unexpected event (bankrupcy or failure). I heard this once: In order to fully appreciate a beautiful morning sunrise you have to go through the cold and the darkness of the night..

To add to your comment, In my situation, I lost the bigger picture. Hard work almost always paid off in a way or in another, whether it's experience gained on field or a better financial situation.

The side I never really considered before is the cost of the lack of balance: my relationship, an (almost) ulcer, etc.

Retrospectively, I should have asked myself before starting: how much and who am I willing to lose in order to gain.

The trouble is in knowing the strength of the foundation. Too often we don't want to admit the failure and keep bad things going because of all the wrong reasons -- kids, mortgages, income etc.

Agree. Look even if you share the same vision of long term growth when you just get married, the reality of the short term responsibilities mobilize all your time and focus. So I learned that there is no such things as tacite mutual agreement in marriage. You've got to remind your partner your long term common objective almost constantly. I thought it's a given, it's not. To take a programming analogy, setting the variables at the beginning of your code is not enough, you've got to use 'global $variablename' within functions (like function workinglate($longtermvision, $values, $love)) to make sure your variables are set and passed on to each function/decision.

Btw, the programming analogy seems to apply that on all types of relationships: couple, work, business partnerships. For some mysterious reasons, short terms challenges (bills, rent, mortgage, loans, etc.) keep blinding our long term objectives.

Not sure I would list kids in the wrong reasons tough.

Excellent article. Here's what'll stay with me:

"The irony is when I was working insane hours it was to make someone else wealthy. When I moderated my behavior it was when they were my startups."

and..

"This life isn’t practice for the next one."

I'm probably much younger than most entrepreneurs here (I'm 22), but I could relate to everything Steve had to say. And I'll add to it; it doesn't pay to be burnt out with unhappy people all around you. The negative energy undoubtedly has an impact on oneself. But what takes the cake, is the realization about how you'd like your gravestone to read.

The biggest factor that Blank had in his favor was that he worked outside his home. If you are going the "garage route" like a lot of YC companies, then I think it is much harder - maybe impossible - especially when your children are young. An environment with your kids in it isn't particularly conducive to working, and young kids will want you to be engaged all the time. There's not a noprocrast setting on a two-year-old.

Which is why you should never go this route. Work in the local library and a coffee shop (for scheduled calls). It's better than your home office and it keeps your hours clear.

Having kids is a huge motivator to succeed.

I started my business when I had one son. I was young and had no fear. Now I have 4, a mortgage, etc, so basically failure is not an option without major consequences. It keeps me hungry for success and doesn't slow me down in the slightest.

Sometimes an article comes up somewhere that fits life perfectly for that moment. I'm currently on vacation, taking some time to figure out how I can achieve a normal life (family, real social life, etc) while running a startup.

A lot of his checklist I figured out (but rarely followed) when I was working a normal job and trying to balance my fiancee and my startup, and some I figured out when looking back, but things like the family dinner and engaging your spouse just didn't really occur to me there. Hopefully I can take his information and make things work out better in the future.

Seen this before, but I like the article. I have been involved in three--one well before I had kids, one now that the kids are out of the house, and the other, well, that was not all that good--was not following his examples.

Deleted comment

This article really had little (if anything) to do with the capabilities of experienced business people, and more to do with how he (the writer) managed to balance a family life and his startups.

Whoops, commenting on the other story on HN about how older founders are more successful.

Too many tabs in Firefox.

Er this is just a verbatim repost of http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-entrepreneur.... See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=663432

"back at work for another 4 or 5 hours until the wee hours of the morning."

What if you need sleep?

Don't start a startup.

Work, life, sleep: choose two.

This is different from college how?

"Life" before you have children is very different than "life" afterward.

Same with "sleep" (which in turn will directly affect our kind of work).

I think one of the most difficult things about this to manage politically is actually the reconciliation of http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html with the comparatively pedantic, very detail-oriented and exacting household maintenance methodologies of most women, and the expectations they have for you to participate.

Surround yourself with supportive people that understand your sacrifice and your hard work. Whom understand the long hours, and the large feat that you are trying to accomplish, and you can be successful. Have a supportive wife/husband, parents, friends etc, and you will be ok. If they are not supportive, then maybe they are not the ones for you. Cannot do both without that support.

Revised title: "Launching a start-up and having a family life: It's possible if you're a man and can dump all the child-rearing on your wife."

Point of order: a female entrepreneur could just as easily put the child-rearing on her husband.* And there's no need for the negative connotation: is it impossible that one partner can happily take the lion's share of the child-rearing duties so that the other can focus on a business?

* applies for all two-gender permutations

A recent quote from a local VC: I've never known an entrepreneur to bootstrap a business to a big win who's marriage survived doing so.

Which is what made me leave Atlanta for Silicon Valley.

And I know multiple entrepreneurs who did exactly that who have amazing families. You want probably the worst person in the world to take life planning advice from? "A local VC".

Hahaha, I don't know anyone who bootstrapped a startup to serious cash since 2002 in Atlanta, PERIOD - and I've looked really hard, talked to everyone in town - let alone that did it and kept a family.

how about an article on working full time, coding in any spare time you have, attend networking meetings and try to maintain a basic relationship with a gf.

Sure, it's possible -- lots of things are possible.

However, I'd argue that it's pretty improbable (at least in the early stages).

WhatEVER. Working until 7, then several more hours after the kids go to bed, and half a day on Saturday, doesn't fit any definition of "balance" that interests me. Also, you've carved out a couple of hours a day for your kids, but what about your wife? Those hours after the kids go to bed are our best quality time alone.

Curiously absent from his list is time spent on social networks (including HN).

how about an article on working full time, coding any spare chance you have, attend networking meetings and try to maintain a basic relationship with a gf.

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