My very concrete feelings on this is that you probably don't.
Asking folks how to do this is a bit like asking billionaires how to get rich. It's a fun story but it's overfitting. The individual narrative that made a billionaire is unlikely to be available for you. If you ask some millionaires they may be more likely to give you some useful advice around sound investment strategies, living within your means, and identifying great opportunities.
You signed up for a bunch of responsibilities. You are always going to be your kids parent. You are only going to have this one opportunity to get this marriage and this family right. If you have a solid job that allows you to be there for them, take it and be amazing in this potentially incredibly rewarding role.
Then do an awesome startup when your kids are out of the house, you have a solid nest egg, and you can take risks again in your 50s.
Agreed 100%. When people ask me what the best time is to work on a startup, it's always when you have no dependents, living with parents, and perhaps no significant other. It's quite amazing just how much you can skim down your expenses at that point in life.
Minimizing expenses, maximizing runway. The rest is luck. Just blind luck.
If you're in the US, and not living with your parents (and or don't want to do that), one of the best ways to do it is to live in a university town. They're wired for fast Internet, the cost of living (including rent) is often very reasonable, they're among the safest areas in the US on average, and you can work at mundane jobs to pay your bills (30-36 hours per week; telemetry tech at a hospital; cashier or lead in retail making $15-$20/hr; etc). In the typical university town you can rent for $650-$1000 for a 1 or 2 bed + 1 bath apartment in a safe area. Working for a hospital you'll also usually get solid health insurance. The jobs are not difficult, they're relatively easy to get, although they will grind on you when combined with doing a startup (it's part of the trade you're making). Also in these types of jobs you won't have much if anything to worry about regarding intellectual property issues, conflicts of interest, et al.
Source: have done this, it works quite well. It can be exhausting working 80-100 hours per week obviously. The income/job becomes a permanent stream of venture capital, you can just endlessly fund your own way and keep 100% of the pie. I've often chosen to not do tech contracting work while working on a startup and self-funding with outside income, because I don't like the potential IP risks/conflicts and the burnout factor of always working on software/services/sites/whatever.
Yeah, I'm living in one now. My rent is $700 for around 750 sq ft of space in a rather typical apartment complex; one bed, one bath, very safe area (it's a safe city in general), access to 1.2 gbps Comcast (I'm paying $30x for 300mbps). That rent will climb to $750 when my lease renews in 2023, but it's still quite reasonable.
Picked a random university city: Tallahassee, FL (Florida State University). Tons of apartments available across the city for $750-$1000. It'll also work for Gainesville, FL (University of Florida; although it's more expensive than Tallahassee).
You can do it in Blacksburg, VA (Virginia Tech). Although it'll push you closer to $900-$1100 on rent. Charlottesville, VA (University Virginia) is at the edge of affordable for this scenario, although that is also doable.
Lubbock, TX is pretty easy (Texas Tech). It'll work for College Station, TX (Texas A&M). Waco, TX (Baylor) is a bit of a mixed bag on crime, however it also works.
It'll work in Champaign, IL (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign).
It'll work in Iowa City, IA (Iowa University). Also in Ames, IA (Iowa St).
It'll even work in Pittsburgh, PA. Which is both a mid-size city and a university city (Pitt, Carnegie).
The same goes for Madison, WI (mid-size city, with University Wisconsin). Although it'll push you closer to $900-$1,100.
It'll work in Athens, GA (University of Georgia).
It'll work in Manhattan, KS (Kansas State).
It'll work in Norman, OK (University Oklahoma).
It'll work in West Lafayette / Lafayette, IN (Purdue).
It'll work in Fayetteville, AR (University Arkansas).
It'll work in Las Cruces, NM (New Mexico St University).
It'll work in Morgantown, WV (West Virginia University).
It'll work in Columbia, SC (University South Carolina). Although the crime is more elevated. The same goes for Tuscaloosa, AL (University Alabama).
It even gets you pretty close for Ann Arbor, MI (University of Michigan). Rent will be closer to $1,100 to $1,200.
There are a lot more options, and that's just among the more prominent university list.
The only ones that typically won't work at all are high cost of living states like MA or CA, particularly affluent universities (getting anywhere near them in location), or smaller towns with few apartments (availability).
I would say it's not JUST luck. You're not going to sell a startup if you haven't created one. So there's requisite work that is then followed by luck.
Not if you consult and find the business needs and only build wher people want and are willing to pay for.
Hitting the startup funding lottery to go on an expedition to find and build something people want is a different matter and maybe what you’re referring to, and if so, I totally agree with.
> Not if you consult and find the business needs and only build wher people want and are willing to pay for.
That's only one part of the challenge. Market research is vital, yet alone is a not guaranteed success. Even if a valuable untapped market is discovered, there's more to success than just building a solution. Sales and marketing have to execute well too. A competitor from an adjacent industry could swoop in. Etc.
I've actually worked at a handful of startups founded by middle aged men with families. I would kill to have coffee with one of their wives or older kids though because there's no fucking way those guys contribute meaningfully to the family life. I know how much they work because I was right there.
Also in every case they were already wealthy, either from early career success or just the traditional path of inheriting it. That takes a lot of the risk out and lets you outsource the domestic labor, reducing some of the burden you're asking your family to carry.
Anyway I've seen that up close and it's not necessarily inspiring.
Elon founded two companies Zip2 and X.com which merged with PayPal, was mega rich and didn’t need to work ever again on his own efforts, before even doing SpaceX and his other ventures
How is this "safety net" relevant? Literally millions of people in America have same or better "safety net". Are they some kind of lazy losers because they haven't earned billions like Elon had?
Consciously or not, having rich parents makes taking big risks in life easier. Even estranged and rich parents could be a lifeline if a crazy plan goes sideways.
Very few in the USA have parents who own emerald mines or an equivalent amount of wealth. So they're not losers. They're just not as fortunate and--understandably--more risk averse.
I'm saying that Elon deserves a modest amount of credit for busting his ass in the early days. But not so much fawning praise since luck and birth also played a outsized role in his successes.
I would guess that in 2023's rankings he will no longer be the world's richest person. That's diminished success, although still an astounding level of it.
That's diminished wealth. Wealth is factored into success, but is not the only unit of it. One can see diminished wealth at the same time as realizing gains elsewhere to no net change or even net gain.
The person I was responding to used wealth as the signal of success. But, unless I mispredict how things will go at Twitter over the next year, we are likely to see a major failure attributed to Elon.
Again, not that he won't be fantastically wealthy or successful. But he will probably take a nasty hit to both his wealth and his reputation because of Twitter.
He alluded to Musk's wealth being the only signal that may have diminished. His presence in the public mind has blown up more than ever as of late, so on that metric alone his success is growing. It would require a substantial hit elsewhere (like his wealth) to see diminishing success overall.
That's not what the poster said. He said that if unless Musk was no longer a billionaire Musk was still successful.
I don't feel that the reason he's been in the public mind is positive. Most of the news for Elon this year has been: "billionaire tries to back out of ill advised takeover event", "billionaire loses lawsuit", "speed run to twitter's destruction", "advertisers pause relationship with Twitter", "fires half of twitter workforce, then asks some of those people to come back to work", "loyalty oath leaves some twitter teams with 0 or 1 employees", "locks doors of Twitter until Monday following, changes mind and asks all twitter employees to race in Friday night"
Taking the sink into Twitter was lighthearted and fun. Everything since then was a disaster. It hasn't made Musk look like a good leader. Literally doing nothing would have been a better plan, and he still could have made news whenever he wanted by doing anything - after he knew what he wanted to do.
> That's not what the poster said. He said that if unless Musk was no longer a billionaire Musk was still successful.
Yes, exactly. Given his increasing success elsewhere, it is suggested he would have to fall below billionaire status for the net change to run negative. The other commenter was quite clear that a a million dollar loss wouldn't see a net decline in his success, even though a million dollar loss would unquestionably be a decline in wealth.
> I don't feel that the reason he's been in the public mind is positive.
We're talking about success, though, not positive qualities. Often the people with the most positive qualities aren't even considered successful at all. They are very much unrelated.
> You signed up for a bunch of responsibilities. You are always going to be your kids parent. You are only going to have this one opportunity to get this marriage and this family right.
I think this is a bit of a depressing take. Even committed parents and spouses take alone time for themselves and have hobbies. Just treat your side project as your hobby and you can still have a healthy family.
Also, think about how much time the average person wastes day-to-day. Total up all the time watching television, reading articles, browsing online. Outsource your chores and improve the efficiency of your day job (e.g., work remotely to eliminate a commute) and you'll have plenty of time left over for a side project.
You might say — how can a side project be successful on 5 hours a day in the early morning? — but consider that someone pursuing a startup for 10 hours a day isn't going to have a significantly higher probability of success relative to other factors that make a larger difference (ability to interact well with other people, product-market fit, etc.) Sure, you might reduce your probability of success a bit, but you are essentially buying a lottery ticket anyway when you decide to start your own company, so would it really bother you much if your already small odds of success are 60% of what they would have been if you committed to the startup full-time?
> Even committed parents and spouses take alone time for themselves and have hobbies.
The parents I know with kids younger than 7 have no time for themselves or their hobbies. They're lucky if they can scrape together a few hours a week for basic self-care. In the mornings the kids demand full attention and after the kids go to bed there's maybe time for a single TV show which one person falls asleep during.
> how can a side project be successful on 5 hours a day in the early morning?
So from 4am-9am a person is grinding away on their side project or startup while their spouse takes care of getting their kids ready. And then at 9am they just slide right into work for a cool 8 hours, eating lunch at their desk and then checking out at 5pm for a nice family dinner.
This sounds like a robot's advice to a human to how to organize their life. Completely not feasibly and devoid of lived experience.
Are you speaking from personal experience? I am a parent and have a younger daughter and I have many other parent friends, we all had kids within a similar age range. I have plenty of time to spend with my family and I am also the founder of a successful company.
If anything, being a parent taught me how to be very efficient with my time and how to cut things out that were meaningless. The arrangement I have with my spouse is that on weekdays I take care of the morning, and she takes care of the night. That means I'm responsible for getting breakfast ready, getting my daughter ready and sent to school, and my wife is responsible for dinner and putting my daughter to bed. On weekends our arrangement is usually that Saturday morning I get to sleep in and my wife mostly handles the day, and on Sunday it's the opposite.
I can't speak for everyone, but as I said before when I became a dad I realized there are just soooo many little things that consume 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, some procrastination here and there and I could cut them all out and add on the order of an additional 120 minutes per day, which is not at all trivial. It used to take me 40 minutes to an hour in the morning to shower, use the bathroom, brush my teeth, get dressed... now all of that is done in about 20 minutes. I used to do various daily errands during busier times of the day and get stuck in lines, now I do them during less busy times of the day.
Finally, changing my life in this way not only has given me more time, it also makes me a much more organized person and a more effective business leader.
As a counter-balance: I have 3 children, twins who are 3 (and I am the twin parent) and a 1 year old. My wife is still in recovery and on partial (she works 20 hours / week right now) disability from the birth of our youngest.
I've reduced my hobbies down to: 1) reading before I fall asleep at night, 2) exercising during my lunch hour on work days. That's it. I managed to change jobs earlier this year but it was challenging and it remains a challenge to remain ahead with my current role due to my family obligations.
My situation is somewhat unique but is certainly not an outlier.
I’m a twin parent as well. Similar situation for a bit.
Becoming a parent during the pandemic or shortly before is no joke on its own. Wish there was a way to connect with them at scale lol. Maybe we can start up a discourse forum together.
Hang in there.
It was nice to see another parent here identify as a twin parent.
The chain you are responding to is talking about working full time, and working a startup on the side, and still having a family life. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you are able to focus on working your company.
My experience is that with two parents, both working full time at demanding jobs, challenging kids under 7, there is hardly time for even the necessities. That said, we do know one-earner families with easy kids, and they do seem to have time for it all.
There’s a theoretically spare hour or two in the evening after bedtime, but at that point both parents have been going flat-out for about fourteen hours, so exercise and passion projects are only going to happen through sheer grit- which both parents have pretty much used up over the last half decade.
Congrats to you that you've made this work. I've made attempts at the "super efficient optimise every moment" thing and it always eventually collapses for me with severe mental exhaustion. I cannot be "on" that much. It just isn't in me.
Yep absolutely, it's not for everyone. One question I'd ask of you is do you exercise regularly? The one thing I'd say that gave me the kind of energy to be "on" all the time is having a daily exercise/cardio routine and changing my eating habits. Not saying this works for everyone, but the effect that doing that had on my life was enormous.
I lift weights. Not too big on cardio, after many attempts at doing it (running, cycling, swimming). Lifting weights is the one thing that I finally found I can stick with. My diet is decent, mostly cook for myself and avoid highly processed foods and a lot of sugar. I am not strictly following any dietary program though.
I like the effect the weightlifting has on my body. It's nice that I have some definition and strength. But honestly cannot say it's had a big effect on my energy, motivation, outlook, etc.
I have tried enough things that other people say have made a tremendous difference in their life, from exercise to supplements to diet to reading philosophical books and they just... don't. I still feel like the same person. I don't think there are any secret tricks. People are who they are, fundamentally. Accepting that feels like giving up sometimes, but also brings some peace and freedom.
Kranar, with all due respect, you are lucky to have a partner who shares the responsibilities equally. All it takes is for one 1/2 not to contribute equally - or to be a single parent - and your plan would simply not work.
I am very lucky and never said otherwise. I am lucky to have an amazing daughter, to live in an amazing country, an amazing wife, to have had all of the opportunities afforded to me.
Not that you explicitly state it, but don't assume that because someone is successful or is giving advice to people about potential paths they can pursue, that they are ungrateful or don't appreciate their life circumstances. One of the other things I'm grateful for are the mentors and role models who have shared their knowledge with me and I'm happy they did so without being drowned out by people dismissing their success as simply due to luck.
Didn't miss your point at all, just informing you that on the whole it's superficial and implied from my post. There is a myriad of things that many of us posting on Hacker News are lucky for, and it's not necessary to point them all out since it can be assumed from context.
To the extent that your reply telling me that I'm lucky to have the wife I have could possibly serve a purpose, it's to be dismissive and to make huge assumptions about me personally that you're frankly not in a position to make. It presumes that my marriage is the result of luck and happenstance and ignores the incredibly hard work and amount of effort that successful marriages require in order to make sure both partners are respected and satisfied.
To be honest, it's not at all uncommon for people who fail to find meaningful relationships, whether it's strong friendships or love to think that they just happen on their own through chance, instead of being something that actually requires putting in effort, compromise, communication, sacrifice, and yes it's true... it also involves luck as well.
Given the context and the general audience of people on this website in a position to meaningfully talk about starting a business, it is likely that said audience is very lucky for many many things; we don't need to point those out, what we need to do is determine how to best put that luck and the opportunities afforded to us towards a meaningful and productive life instead of squandering that luck away.
And finally, when someone prefaces a post with "with all due respect", that's usually a passive aggressive way of telling them off, so if you want people to afford you some degree of respect in the future then think about cutting that out.
Can second this. My arrangement with my spouse is the opposite. She takes care of the mornings and me the evenings, and then I take weekends. It gives me a lot of free time.
I’m a parent and I know a lot of parents. The amount of time available for self-care and hobbies varies dramatically, based on type of job, whether you work remotely, whether both parents work, whether you have childcare, number and temperament of children, etc. Some can pull off a side business, some can’t.
And even if you can, you very likely won’t get five hours of productive time in every morning. But you can get one or two on most days, and that might be enough to build something that’s making enough to take a leap and go full-time. If you’re lucky. It’s hard, but not impossible.
Agreed. My impression is that most parents are already overworked at their day jobs, and then proceed to not even workout. Lots of people don't even have hobbies.
I have young kids very close in age. Doing a startup. Life doesn’t get easier, you just have to get better kids or not. Besides todays the youngest you’ll ever be, if both now, then when?
tldr; You can get funding and have balanced pursuit and resources. For the 98% of founders who can’t, won’t or don’t get funding, self-funding and bootstrapping is a way to build the thing to free your time to then swing for the fences - same transferable startup skills required.
With kids, I realized I traded a lot of time wasting for two amazing beings and it’s optimizing my time with and ultimately for them. People make expensive decisions that lock them in to cost time in addition to kids. Minimizing those has been a blessing. You can get back many hours. I’m going to share here so other parents can share with me here and I can learn from them.
On to trying to paint an alternative picture:
One thing missing in this post is it’s more about the effectiveness with your time than the quantity of it as you get older. When starting out, few are effective with their time but we have lots to waste. If we can admit it’s needed we can become more effective quicker.
Today, every minute matters. I’m not perfect, but nothing gets easier, you just get better. Everything’s a grind.
Kids can help prioritize in a big way for some. If you think you have an idea based in hearing from parents it’s not super accurate because everyone’s life situation is different.
- 4-9 am isn’t a guarantee. Kids will be sick. Late nights can be tiring. I find I can just go to bed at 8 or 9 most nights and wake up at 2 or 3. Works great if I have a few devs overseas helping because am in my 30s and probably have a few thousand to get help with. When I slip in my schedule I start over.
- Being hyper organized with every little step that needs to be done next helps make the most of small pockets of time. This was hard for me and I’m still learning to get better every day. If I don’t casually get 4-8 hours straight on the weekends to work on something I still am able to find ways to be more effective.
- Startups are a business not coding alone: Time away from the keyboard can actually be valuable to stop and get perspective. Often I don’t need hours anymore to do something where it can be done in 60 minutes while thinking about it away from the keyboard. Thinking can actually be a lot of the work to be done in some steps. I never would have designed and simplified a great deal in my startup if it wasn’t for those late nights.
- Face yourself. Generally ppl who weren’t the best with their time before kids might have a hard time after. Everyone Has run to improve but not everyone realizes discipline leads to improvement and freedom.
- Learn to change better than you are: A lot of people aren’t as good with change as they imagined themselves to be too. It’s why advice sucks sometimes. If you’re good with changes and improvements you’ll love meeting the next version of you on the other side of kids.
Things I’ve done against the grain as a entrepreneur and new parent..
- Big problems and opportunities often attract to small problems that get solved: the initial idea should be strategic, disciplined and calculated enough to be successful. This means small enough and able to win $ and be part of the big picture to grow into. Buy my time back with a small team that I pay for or get tinyseed type funding for. Maximize return, lower risk, build momentum, failure is not an option.
To pursue this in my personal life:
- Don’t buy things that I’m buying a ton of maintenance time with. Cars, houses, pets (pets usually becomes dads pets) should all be thought about a little more. Buying boring things or none at all saves your time. Let your friends have fun taking their Audis to the shop all the time. But boring so you can spend your time on interesting things.
- Eliminate commuting as much as possible. Actually most driving. But have a car. 2 hours a day driving is 10 a week, ~40 a month. Imagine getting 1 extra week per month back. Get a vehicle with room to get more stuff done near by. Batch. Save time wasting for a planned times of fun.
- Social Invitations- it can be hard to imagine but people do end up in their lives just over times. if they won’t come to you sometimes you don’t always have to go to them.
- Setup an above average remote work setup and build the space it into your home life. Get multiple ergonomic proper work setups, put gaming stuff in its own dedicated space. Two 2k monitors minimum if not 3. Slightly better screen resolution gives more working pixels which helps work much faster. Buy different keyboards including economic and cycle them through. Every little thing saves your energy a bit longer for work or family. Every desk should be a standing desk they are super inexpensive now. Our home has multiple spaces with multiple monitors that can plug in a mac or surface pro. If it’s the open room there’s a noise cancelling headset so people hear kids less if they were ever home sick. ready to go. Keeps everyone calm and cool. One workspace is the room between mine and kids. If someone’s up at night they can be super close by. It’s a sound proofed room so calls can even happen. All to say it takes seconds to plug in and get going instead of minutes. Adds up too. Buy extra power adapters.
- Improve mobility: Carry a big screen phone + iPad mini in a sling, or ideally a MacBook 12” in your baby bag. So much down time in vehicles or appointments can be easily recaptured. Again if you want it all your might have to be creative to get at it. My 12” MacBook is the best for unexpected waits or delays time. Wish I had it as a 2nd laptop when it just came out. Priceless.
- Location should create free time; we left the burbs and came back closer to downtown. Pick up times our kids now has an extra hour or two of flexibility for work (!), And most days we’re done and drive home in 8 minutes. Dinner is cooked served and done before rush hour is over. Most of my friends are usually still driving home. Doing this sooner in the day helps wind down for kids with quality time and energy easier, and there’s still energy to start back up on work. The alternative is I could go do the things I’m supposed to and get a house far in a suburb and kids are under pressure to sleep. Not always a good feeling not a possibility for everyone.
- food. Your energy is what you eat. Meal prep until you have enough meals in fridge and meals prepped in the freezer before cooking any nightly meals. Buy 2 instant pots to do rice and food at the same time or 2 meals at the same time. Did prep Sundays and Wednesdays if needed. Eat out less and feel sluggish less.
- ask for and take help and pay for it if you need: if you can live closer to your family, work and startup it can be life changing. One of my friends lives next to their parents. Siunds crazy but no vehicles to load or unload. Kids can be kicked out to grandparents for last minute night out. Kids are also standing outside to help grandma/pa to load and unload groceries. It doesn’t matter if something isn’t packed or forgotten. I understand this isn’t possible for many of us but I am happy for those who it works for.
- have everything you can delivered on subscription, spend the saved shopping time to adjust frequency of times.
Message for above poster / in general:
Please, don’t tell or imply people they aren’t capable of something. Innovation can only happen in a mindset of possibility and the world isn’t a toilet for doubt worshippers wanting to externally validate their doubts by painting them on others.
Everything has opportunity cost. I try to remember what kind of example and memory I want to be for my kids and let it balance and inform my presence with them. My spouse reminds me the only ppl who will care long term that I’m dead is my kids and hopefully her lol. It gives some a focus to live and achieve for that can magnify and accelerates a lot.
I’m not telling you to have kids or not.
Be open to seeing the good and you will. If you want to see the bad and worries you’ll see it too. You might just discover most things are like lifting weights at the gym, you get stronger the more you do it and not from the sidelines.
I actually agree with a lot here. If the question had been "how can I have a fulfilling hobby while also working full time", i think I'd agree with a lot of the advice you gave. It's very good advice about time boxing, having realistic goals, and looking for a well rounded life. Having hobbies is something that can be really rewarding, and hobbies can be many kinds of things, from deeply technical to purely relational and social.
However, I will admit my bias here, the OP explicitly talked about "a startup", and I don't believe I know of too many hobbies that allowed someone to replace their income and retain their standard of living. The people I know who have done this have, regularly, done so with significant risk, commitment, and single-mindedness of purpose. I'm sure there are exceptions as those you listed, but I personally haven't experienced them.
To me, it's not the time - but the energy. I have about 4 solid "mentally productive" hours in a day that use up the majority of my mental brain energy. Trying to cultivate that energy to do a side hustle after kids are asleep is the real challenge.
For sure, you're only going to have a few hours of 10x productivity, but you can still get something done outside of that optimal time interval.
I've been kinda weaseling lately and just working on my startup during my best hours before work. Mr. Fangman will be satisfied even if I just "meet expectations", and I'd rather put my best efforts into something that can pay off bigger than a 5-6 figure yearly bonus
I agree with the premise of this, but want to point out a normal job doesn’t necessarily lead to fulfilling those responsibilities adequately even though maybe they should. People still get stressed, overwork, have ambition, dislike home life, etc.
I think OP should talk with his wife and make a decision based on milestones
1. If it's a bad job that pays well but makes you miserable, that's a different situation. I assumed that was not the case but I may have been hasty.
2. No matter what, discussing with your partner is absolutely the right thing. But really discussing and coming together to try to come to a shared understanding. You never know, their tolerance for risk may be even higher than yours!
The part I agree with is to just ask people who have done what you want to do and get an idea of the sacrifice and time commitments involved.
The part I DISAGREE with is to wait to do a startup until you’re in your 50’s. This is really horrible advice that can lead to resentment for you and negative outcomes for your family. You CAN start a business and have a family but you’ll need to be STRATEGIC.
A couple of personal tips for bootstrapping…
1. Communicate and commit to joint goal setting with your family. What are you all working towards together and why? None of us build companies alone.
2. Make your day job your first customer and biggest supporter. If you can’t then join an organization that is not threatened by entrepreneurship.
3. Identify a family friendly business model that you can test with minimal effort. I’ve always started my own businesses with my own money (Seed ~100k USD). My largest business does high seven figures and I started it with ~25k USD. This means getting in bed with a customer(s) early and charging upfront. Again see (2).
4. Set reasonable timelines for yourself. While your LinkedIn feed has friends pumping out VC propaganda remind yourself that you’re focused on actually building a sustainable business so take your time where you can. This might mean working with your wife to create a schedule for yourself where you work on the business TOGETHER a couple of hours every evening and weekends. When you bootstrap, you decide your own timeline.
5. Pivot and budget. Sometimes it’s not going to work so be prepared to put your business on autopilot (if stable), rework it or just kill it early. Cattle not pets. Businesses are tools; nothing more.
6. You will have to sacrifice something so work with your family to know what those things will be… less going out with friends, less TV/gaming/music festivals, less vacations, less spending, etc (See #1)
I would throw in one caveat - at least consider delaying launch until your youngest is in kindergarten. You probably won’t be fifty, it’s not that long. Certainly do some legwork ahead of time, but in my experience the earliest years have the least wiggle room. I seriously burned myself out trying like hell to do it all, and in retrospect wish I’d have paused several ambitions for just a few years. In so doing, I’d have been fresh & ready the moment wiggle room returned.
I also took this path and have yet to really succeed. I am now 45 and an empty nester. I wrote about some of my failed businesses in this blog post titled, "How to Lose Money with 25-Years of Failed Businesses".
I disagree with your advice, because it amounts to "sit around and do nothing, give up on your goals."
I know someone who has a family who stated a side business in their spare time in their 30's.
It started extremely modestly using just some spare time, and I think a lot of people have at least some spare time. The average person spends, what, 4 hours a day watching TV? If OP has an hour a day they can make at least some progress.
This person also uses freelancers to help achieve chunks of work where they aren't experts. A modest amount of savings can pay for some of these deliverables.
I know someone else who sells baked goods at farmers markets. They put some time into baking and posting to social media but it's a side gig. Another person I know got together with a group to help share the effort and they're working on a hummus business (again, selling at farmers markets). These are all people with families and day jobs.
Instead of that fatalist do-nothing advice of "wait until you're an empty nester," I'd say "start small." Don't expect to be a massively scaling SaaS thing. Don't expect to replace your income, certainly not within ~5 years. Don't try to build some wildly complicated product. Budget your time, don't neglect your personal life. Focus on solving a simple pain point for a specific type of customer.
The other thing I'd warn OP about: don't start a business for the wrong reason. The wrong reason is dreaming of a lottery ticket out of wage slavery. The right reason is that you've identified an area that you think has potential to help someone else achieve a positive outcome, especially an area where you have some kind of expertise.
I agree with a lot of the sentiment of your comment, particularly about introspecting and understanding what your reason for doing a startup is. I think that's very good advice.
However I don't feel that "being a solid professional making a solid wage, and be a good parent and partner" amounts to "sit around and do nothing, give up on your goals." I feel like the advice I gave is "wait until the time is right", which is different from fatalist nothing-doing!
Successful != typical, or even average in this context when referring to folks that start.
If you’re looking at starting, it’s helpful, but it’s important to not delude ourselves either.
Having more life experience helps, but when the funnel has a > 90% overall attrition rate, it’s still far from a sure bet.
Part of the reason why the older folks tend to do better IMO, is it’s more likely at that age that they know their own capabilities better and are less likely to launch down a path they’ll definitely not succeed on, and the numbers reflect that more.
It doesn’t mean automatically everyone once they hit that age will have those odds.
Possibly some but not that much. The linked research states that the age is still up at 42 when you remove "successful", and still 40 if you then add "software".
I'm not sure I understand. But I think my answer is, "yes, I would!"
By that point, hopefully I have enough self knowledge to understand what motivates me and what my true competitive advantages are. I also hopefully have a strong network I can leverage to help me with any blind spots I may still carry. And to spend 5-10 years working on something that I truly am passionate about, which I've worked hard to have the resources to do without encumbering others, sounds rather nice!
As someone close to 50 in this boat it a great question.
The fact is I wanted to build a startup to get rich. That's it really. Now that I am much more finically secure (but not rich by a long shot) I'm not sure I will want to roll the dice or just keep my job as an IC.
This underestimates longevity a bit: a 55-year-old in the US has a life expectancy of ~26-29 years (male and female, respectively).[1] Granted, this may hinge on what you mean by "active" years.
My perspective changed when I had kids. And I had kids close together, Matter than friends to boot.
Mostly I realized how’s much time I was wasting to that point in life and I stopped.
It’s perfectly possible to do a startup at any age. Know many people who do and have.
Kids were a perfect prioritization and decision aid in my case. It makes you perfectly serious about doing what needs to be done. Innovation can happen just fine with constraints.
Leading up to it if you don’t have good adult habits and skills you probably some be a lasting successful entrepreneur anyways.
Doing a startup is a lot like being responsible for a baby. Some things need to be done whether you like them or not. Status aren’t just about working on the fun parts.
Getting it right also means making sure you are the kind of example you want to be for them to take their own shots. Sacrificing parents can better a sense of sacrifice in kids and it might be a cycle someone is looking to break.
Would there be more time before kids? Sure. But hard to find people in their 20s a made the most of their time beyond chasing every shiny thing. Generally our standards for how we spend our time are lost in our 20s and improves as we become more well rounded.
You only start getting good and dangerous in your 30s and 40s. It’s why so many vcs are older, they buy the years of young people and are ok if it goes no where.
If you don’t want to be a statistic, you can look at bootstrapping smaller and then growing. There are funds like tinyseed and others that specialize in it.
In your CV 30s you probably have insight in an industry need that you could bang out and have making money per easily to transfer to the next thing. HN might not be the place for this kind of thought especially if it’s orthogonal to the vc echo chamber that attracts a following and needs a decade to see in balance with other options.
If success is freedom of time, attention and resources where you want to put them, the path of startups as you are implying (likely funded) might not be compatible with you.
Todays the youngest you’ll ever be. If not now, then when?
I do, thanks for asking! I am the proud dad of a 22 year old son :-)
I definitely agree that having a child can be a spectacular forcing function for focus for some. I unfortunately also know folks for whom having a child was the proverbial straw, and whose life fell apart afterwards.
I was running my own company (RFID and industrial automation startup) before him. When I became a dad I found a corporate job. The worry around healthcare costs for a family as an independent were simply too much for me, even back then. All in all, I feel very fortunate in how it all worked out for my family.
I completely understand and see where you’re referring to with having kids being the proverbial straw for some.
It will shake the trees and see if we’re as solid as we think you we lol.
The thought of a cushy corporate job and what it pays compared to the average payout from equity in a startup isn’t too far apart pretty often. I have done stints of consulting when I needed to do market research and it was a nice way to deep dive to find the no brainer things a business would pay for.
Healthcare is no joke. I’m very lucky to be based in Canada from that perspective, even if it’s geospatial further from some tech things that interest me - travel is a fair compromise.
In my case the dip and test didn’t hit until they were 15 months, and it was interesting that I made it over 2 years including the pregnancy before wanting to check in.
I rezzo you have hand keep the itch alive to work on hobby projects. RFID and industrial automation is a cool area that I got to experience alongside someone on a project.
Last but not least happy to receive any parenting advice
If only anyone knew what that one awesome startup was.
Its the market that drives businesses. If I wait too long to even start trying, chances are slim that I ever will try, markets change you know
On the other hand, if I wait, building a business off the network and skills and reputation and market knowledge I've built, has a higher chance of survival.
My philosophy is to be non-dogmatic but probabilistic and opportunistic. If you see an opportunity, try it out, take a loss maybe, and learn and try again.
Like a good gamble, you need to spend most of the time at the table, in the game before betting big, not working in the shop next door waiting to get in.
My situation isn't quite the same, but it is leaving a well paid job when I have two kids and a mortgage in order to work in some to-be-determined field where I have no experience, with no opportunity (after a short window) to return to my former field if I change my mind.
First, have some savings and a plan to minimize burn rate if things get tough. More importantly, there needs to be a compelling answer to what you're accomplishing for your family, or what you as a family are accomplishing, by making the change away from your present comfortable arrangement.
Disagree. Not every startup has to be a massive success, not every founder needs to be a billionaire, and not everyone has to work like Elon Musk - you’re probably not sending rockets to Mars.
OP might be very happy with a company with no employees that makes 200k a year.
To the OP: save up for 6 months of working on your own thing, OR, launch loads of little experiment MVPs that don’t need lots of work to get _something_ out quickly.
I sold mine and waited 10+ years until kids are in the last two years of high schools, I also saved a bit during these years so I have some cushion to restart my startup dream. Maybe it's why there are a group of entrepreneurs in their late 40s and early 50s just like what I had?
The upside to waiting is also gaining experience. There's something to be said to learning in environments that work before taking a stab yourself. I'm sure many founders over 40 avoid many mistakes this way
Only problem is when you are 50s you are likely to have the time and money but not the energy. Surely it is not the case with everyone but enough to have this cliche pass around for quite some time.
And that is why it is rare that it happens. Which is fine, it’s not a ride many people would even want once they have the rest of their life stabilized.
> you are 50s you are likely to have the time and money but not the energy
who do you think initiated these "startup" patterns post-2000 ? It was boomer+ investors using vast investment pool money, in the last 20 years.. now they are dying off and it is on auto-play via "don't get creative" money builders.
> My very concrete feelings on this is that you probably don't.
The ones that do - and usually the few in this age group that succeed - are already independently wealthy from a combination of having a highly successful career and making good investments.
People that have $1M+ to fall back on - and can easily land another job making $400k+ - if things don't work out.
You don't see too many 35 year-olds with 3 kids and no savings starting Ubers.
Every once in a while you find an Elon Musk who already had plenty of money, and decided to start another business.
People with insignificant amounts of savings starting successful companies are almost exclusively in their teens or 20s.
Well, you definitely don’t see any smart ones doing that, and for good reasons.
Is it impossible with a stressful job, a bunch of kids, etc. and not being independently wealthy to do it?
Not necessarily, I guess?
It is definitely not a good idea, however, and it’s highly likely to implode one of those other areas of their life.
And frankly, it isn’t a good idea for the vast majority of independently wealthy folks either. The types of pressure and lack of structure in the environment can and does mess with peoples minds, and can encourage them to end up a lot less wealthy at the end.
If they’re particularly unlucky or mess up, even with expensive legal issues following them around.
Asking folks how to do this is a bit like asking billionaires how to get rich. It's a fun story but it's overfitting. The individual narrative that made a billionaire is unlikely to be available for you. If you ask some millionaires they may be more likely to give you some useful advice around sound investment strategies, living within your means, and identifying great opportunities.
You signed up for a bunch of responsibilities. You are always going to be your kids parent. You are only going to have this one opportunity to get this marriage and this family right. If you have a solid job that allows you to be there for them, take it and be amazing in this potentially incredibly rewarding role.
Then do an awesome startup when your kids are out of the house, you have a solid nest egg, and you can take risks again in your 50s.