tadmilbourn

Wrote up a quick list of common sense actions that can help make the business to contractor relationship run more smoothly. Relevant if you use any contractors (especially if you have a whole team of them).

I'm interested in what the any of you in the HN community have done to make these relationships run more smoothly. Or, the converse, what's gone poorly and how would you avoid in the future?

Fantastic additions. Urgent vs. Important is a great framework.

Well...you did call me pretentious. And elitist. And stated I wasn't spending enough time with my family. That was a little judgmental.

But I do get your points on the Valley bubble and the implicit values it places on work/life balance. There's a much higher penchant for career than in other parts of the country. That's why I brought up the fact that I grew up in Green Bay. I understand what a different value structure looks like. There's plenty that I like about it and plenty I don't.

It's always fair to question "what really matters" and "am I doing the right things."

Thanks Rosser. To be clear, I didn't feel I was blaming or lamenting anything. My point with the article was to share "these are my choices and how I made them." Some favored the business, others favored the family.

Each person should decide what they feel is best for their situation and understand the tradeoffs their making.

That's offensive to me on so many levels. I know some HTML and CSS, but no...I can't code. And I have a business degree. And...oh god...look at that haircut. Run! He might have an MBA (I don't)!

Just because I'm "non-technical" doesn't make Y-Combinator irrelevant or inappropriate to me (or for anyone else).

If you look at the very LinkedIn profile you link to, you'll see that I've been a product manager at Intuit for nearly 8 years prior to founding Tiempo. I've dealt with creating software that entire time. I've learned how to build teams. I've learned how to build businesses.

YC is for people who want to build great companies. I fall firmly into that category.

Plus, my cofounders can code. Check out our app if you still don't think we belong (http://www.tiempoapp.com).

Susan is awesome (she's a batch mate)! And made a hugely difficult decision with her LA to SF commute.

I was working on an outline for this post two weeks ago then I saw Susan's post hit and I thought two things:

1) People are very interested in this topic and 2) I should probably hold off on my post for a week :-)

I'd say that the other high-stress industries cause a similar dynamic. Work/Family pressure is not exclusive to startups or tech startups or however you want to label it.

But, the one difference I'd call out with doing a startup (or owning any small business), is that you're responsible for whether that business fails or not and any of the jobs that are attached to it.

So you feel an intense responsibility to those other coworkers and their families.

You also have this if you're a manager in a larger company, but I think the intensity with which you feel it is a lesser degree (you messing up is still not good, but the company may still survive).

Hehe...well, I'd tell your "friend" to build up some savings.

My wife and I both had very nice jobs at Intuit for 7.5 years (she's now at a new company). That allowed us to build a nice nest egg. Instead of spending that on a down payment for a house, it's now the cushion that allows us to do it.

So, not having a mortgage to pay helps :-)

Living within your means to build up some savings also helps.

I wouldn't have been able to do this if we hadn't done those things. Which is why I'm a 31-year-old doing a startup instead of fresh out of college.

I'm 31! You're not over the hill yet :-).

In fact, our whole founding team was 30 and married. There are many different configurations for starting a company. My advice is to take whatever your situation is...and use it to your advantage.

It's interesting that others in the thread have implied that I'm not spending enough time on my startup and will be out-hustled.

My wife and I both work. So, we have our kid in daycare. 5:30-8:30 is actually 100% of the time from daycare pickup until she goes to sleep. If she doesn't go to sleep until 9:30, then that means I'm with her until then.

On the weekends, I work while she naps or is having one on one time with her mom.

My point is that I'm spending as close to 100% of the hours I have with my kid.

I grew up in Green Bay, WI (about as non-bubble as you can get) with a dad who worked nights. Once I was in school, I'd see him at dinners only. But he made every soccer game I was in. He had to make choices between his career and his family. And I think he did an excellent job of it. His time with me, though less than my mom's, was always attentive. We have a great relationship. I think he made the right choices for our family.

This isn't just a Valley issue...I just happen to be in the Valley. Many parents struggle with how to make the tradeoffs between work and family. My hope in sharing my situation is that others can get another perspective and maybe take away a thing or two to try.

Thanks! I experienced a similar thing the first time around. I enjoy my work. But pre-kid, I found myself spending longer days where I wasn't actually "on."

Post-kid, there's far more meaning to whether you're at work or not. All of the sudden, I was getting done in 8 hours what I used to do in 10 or 12 (or in 12 hour what used to be 16).

Congrats on the upcoming child! Best of luck!

It sounds like your head is screwed on as well :-)

Very good points. Part of why I was able to make the "startup leap" is because my wife and I both worked at Intuit for 7.5 years. We established a good amount of savings that allows us to not have to worry so much about things like the cost of daycare/diapers/etc.

If the finances were tighter, that would add another level of stress to the equation.

There are others that I've written up that I'm transferring over. Some were on Medium. Experimenting with different publishing platforms to figure out how best to engage our audience.

I'll wire up connections to other articles. In the meantime:

http://www.tiempoapp.com/how-minimum-is-viable http://www.tiempoapp.com/tiempo-blog-how-we-got-this-freelan... http://www.tiempoapp.com/tiempo-blog-the-surprising-power-of...

You're right. Those were my choices. Fortunately, over the past few months, the servers have stayed up and my daughter hasn't had a need to go to the hospital. Those are holy shit moments.

But most of life is lived in a more mundane day-to-day way. Those days are filled with your choices about where and how you spend your time.

I wrote this post to detail how I go about making these decisions because I know there are others out there in a similar position. Just hearing another perspective is helpful.

Someone just pointed me to this post from Change.org's COO and I greatly appreciated her take: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141022041002-407452...

On the scalable startup or not...we wouldn't have gotten into YC if we didn't have a plan.

No one forced me to do a startup. No one forced me to have a kid. Those were my choices. And as a result, I'm in a situation that requires a lot of compromise.

I think there are many others in this situation, but it doesn't get talked about all that often.

My intent with the post was to share the things I've learned that have helped in the hope that they'll help others.

I'm not complaining about my life. In fact, I'm quite happy. Very happy. But that doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't share my decision making process for others to potentially benefit.

That's the struggle. And, you've called it out precisely. There will be some extremely tough choices. Hopefully it doesn't come to a choice where the business is at risk due to a family decision (or vice versa). But, you've got to stay mindful of that fact. That's why I liked the juggling "Rubber" or "Glass" balls metaphor from my previous CEO.

My thoughts on ways to balance the needs of a growing startup with the needs of a growing family. Would love to know what others in similar situations have tried. What's worked? What hasn't?

There's been some backlash against Lean Startup and Minimum Viable Products as of late. The implication is that it forces you to release crappy products. In the post I outline how we apply MVP thinking to our product development process. It's by no means as "minimum" as possible, but it's working for us.

I'd love to know how other teams apply this thinking (or not) in their development process?

I think this is the 4th major blog that I've seen just repost Andreesen's tweet stream.

But, regardless of frothy times or not, the advice is solid. Keep your burn low. Run as lean as possible until you've figured out the business model.

Thanks! That's good to know. I always struggle with whether brevity or depth is most useful to the audience. Sounds like it's good to stick with depth!

This chronicles the tests we did this summer with rethinking the invoice and getting people paid faster. I'm thinking of doing another post where we dive deeper on how we did these tests, made our product development decisions, and so on. Is that something the HN crowd would be interested in?

Great ideas! If everyone had a Dwolla account, it would be a wonderful thing. Instant payment transfer at low cost. That's the future we want to see. We'll layer on more payment methods over time so that folks can choose which method makes the most sense for them based on cost and speed.

Awesome! Make sure to click the "I want this!" button on the Settings page in Tiempo. Then you'll be on our contact list as we further flesh out the integration.

Thanks for the context... did you have agreements with your client where you billed them by the day or week? If so, did you still have to "itemize" your day and provide some record of what you did? Did you ever work for multiple clients over the course of a single day?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, just trying to better understand the use case and think of potential solutions.

Thanks! On your feedback:

- I apologize for our overly American design :-). We're based out of California, so we tend to build from that point of view first. Dates, Timezones, Language and Currencies are all things we'll have to deal with. Your CSV recommendation is easy enough to make in the meantime. Thanks for pointing it out!

- The timer will soon open while its running. It's a more complicated situation on mobile where taking notes after actually makes sense.

- There will be a "billed" status shortly to ensure that doesn't happen (we track that but haven't made it apparent in the user interface).

- Those bubbles are just begging to be filled! Another "coming shortly" feature. Having the person's face is actually an important factor in creating invoices that are more likely to be paid quickly.

What are the differences that you see between a day/week workflow and an hourly one?

Yes! We have an integration with QuickBooks Online already. Xero and ZenPayroll are next on our list. Another commenter mentioned Wave, so maybe we'll get to them before long.

That's one of the top concerns I have as well. But, as you point out, the majority of the time that's not the case. So far, we've found that the notifications provide better transparency than the more common "here's all the work I did over the last month." I recently had a case with our accountant where I received a bill 3 weeks after the work was done and I totally didn't remember it. I emailed her and then we got on the phone to talk about it. All of that is wasted time (and money).

Cool! Let's chat. I'll reach out to you.