Can you have a baby and a startup? (not easily)
calacanis.com
calacanis.com
Calacanis is right about this much: having a kid is not overrated. It's amazing. However, I would echo another commenter here and suggest that what I've observed is that I waste less time than I did before the baby. Over the past few weeks I've been more focused and "in the moment" when I am working, because I know once my allotted work time is over, it's baby and Mommy time and rightly so. I've also, in general, been suffering fools less gladly. My time is worth more now.
The one thing I would disagree with Jason about is waiting until a specific time (he says 30-something). I think it's a mistake to reduce it all to a matter of age; it really does depend on the personalities and circumstances of the parents. Some people are not going to have the energy at age 40 that they had when they were 20, especially if you didn't take care of your physical and mental health when you were young. He's right to add that they use up a lot of your energy. Another reason to consider starting a family early. I'll be 60 when my son turns 18 and presumably starts college. Not everyone wants to do that, or can!
1) The wisdom that comes with age does not really help much dealing with kids, but that wisdom would definitely help to run successful startup.
2) With age it's harder to have healthier babies. Especially for women.
So it's better to slow your start-up development (or even postpone it if necessary) and have kids first.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/about-fathers/200901/old...
As much as I'd like to do a startup at this time in my life, I get a feeling I'd really enjoy having a family as I'm a bit of a softie.
Something for me to digest.
Thanks for sharing your wisdom.
So far so good.
EDIT / PS: Moving to Boston to be near family has been a lifesaver for us. Despite all the negatives (from a startup standpoint) of being here, there's actually very little chance I could work as hard if we didn't have the support.
I've done two startups during our three years and two kids of parenting and the whole situation definitely requires large amounts of energy and effort.
But one cool thing that also starts to happen, for me it was after the parental bonds had started to strengthen and it did take a while, is that I've noticed myself actually drawing energy from them...
There's no other feeling in the world like looking at some little person and knowing they love you unconditionally.
That new project you worked months on that has zero traffic? The VC who walked away? Grief from your wife because you've done two unsuccessful startups now?
None of that is larger than the fact that your kids love you. Which for me, is awesome.
:)
I do miss having some of the free time that I used to be overflowing with, but I wouldn't change a thing (well maybe family close by to babysit the kids every Sunday --> never discount the value of having family near by ... assuming of course you get along well).
It seems to me that whether you can have a baby and a startup depends almost entirely on what your wife is like. There's no reason your wife can't take care of the baby on her own with you popping in every now and then to put the bread on the table; it just depends on how supportive she is.
(Yes, this post is horrendously sexist, no I don't feel like discussing that aspect of it, so if you feel compelled to stand up for the notion that men and women are entirely alike then just move on. For the case of a female entrepreneur I'd say no, you probably shouldn't have a baby and a startup at the same time.)
Of course, you can talk about this stuff beforehand, but once the baby arrives, everything can change in any case.
It's not easy, but hugh3 is right, if nothing else, about the fact that the woman plays a huge role in things (duh:-) and not mentioning that is leaving out some of the story.
Being a daddy means many things. In the early years obviously your kid will need nothing but your attention. You could be banging cucumbers on your head and you would be bonding.
But as your child grow older shouldn't you also stand for something? Be someone they can look up to be inspired by?
My kid is the most important think in the world, but exactly for that reason I am not stopping everything I have build up so far. I want that to be an inspiration, not just someone he can play hide and seek with.
1) Your wife is probably more important, than your child: in 20 years your child would be gone (to have separate life), but you would stay with your wife longer than that.
2) You can have several children. Would you name one of them as "the most important"?
3) If you consider you child the most important -- it may spoil the child.
That said -- children are definitely important part of your life.
It's possible for a father, perhaps, to consider the wife more important (after all, she can produce more babies!) but I doubt most mothers would agree that the husband is more important than the child, especially since a growing number of them don't even have one.
Re: 3, thinking that your child is the most important thing in your life has little bearing on how you raise them, except perhaps on the tail end where parents do not care at all and the child ends up being taken away by the DSS.
Not that it matters in the context of this discussion though :-)
2) Wife can not only produce more babies, but also raise existing kids, support the family (financially and otherwise), and more.
The same is applicable to the husband.
3) Internal thinking affects your behavior. A lot. So if you think that your kid is THE MOST important thing in your life -- you are more likely to make mistakes and bad choices.
I used 'child', but I did mean 'children'. Not going to travel down the road of semantics there.
I also don't believe I advocated, nor did Jason in his post, the stopping of everything else in one's life so that they can be a parent. "Most" important implies that there are other things of importance in ones life, and having accomplishments that can be shared with or serve as inspiration to our children is a wonderful gift to give.
As Einstein said, "Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."
To most parent's their children is the most important so I don't think you need to spell that out, we know.
Therefore I can only assume that you meant something different. If not then fine, then I just don't understand the purpose of your post.
I write in a gender independent style (unlike your comment!).
That is why I didn't bring up a "my wife" or "your wife." Many of the folks who responded to the email were women running startups who have stay at home dads, or dads as primary caregivers.
Additionally, there are families with one parent, three parents, four parents and any number of gender permutations. (Think divorced folks who remarry/re-partner... thus the child having 3 or 4 parents).
I tried to address the issue of a startup founder and a baby, and figured it was implied that your partner (or partners) need to buy in.
You are correct in that you need your partner(s) buy in, but incorrect in that the person has to be a wife!
Finally, it's wildly offensive to say women should not run a startup. I'm guessing you are troll in order to get a reaction here, since you're making such an outlandish statement AND saying you won't discuss said outlandish statement (in a discussion forum).
> "I write in a gender independent style (unlike your comment!)."
That seems fairly silly considering 95%+ of founders are men. Women founders are an edge case. Whether that's how things should be or not is a question for another day IMHO (Ask women why they don't want to be founders), but acknowledging the fact that 95% of founders are men, isn't being sexist.
I think his point is completely valid - if you have a supportive spouse, you can be 50% involved in baby, or you can be 1% involved in baby. If it's 1% then it won't really impact your success in a startup (Although you'll most likely live to regret it).
At the end of his message he writes: "For the case of a female entrepreneur I'd say no, you probably shouldn't have a baby and a startup at the same time.)"
>> Women founders are an edge case.
While it might be true that female founders are a small percentage, that doesn't mean they don't deserve the respect of being included in the discussion on equal footing.
They are equally capable of being founders, as such it's best to use gender-neutral language out of respect.
Another way to think of this, is that women wanting to vote was an edge case.
Another way to think of this is that black founders are an "edge case" according to your description. That doesn't mean you should exclude them from the discussion.
The words we choose are very important, and being inclusive costs you nothing but a little bit of empathy and diligence when thinking about the "edge cases."
And yes, his point about having a supportive spouse making it easier is correct. However, in many cases that spouse needs to make money to support the startup spouse--which precludes them being the primary caregiver. Which goes to my point of "start in your 20s, family in your 30s" advice.
At the end of his message he writes: "For the case of a female entrepreneur I'd say no, you probably shouldn't have a baby and a startup at the same time.)"
Do I really have to explain what's wrong with that?
Is it really worth everybody's time for me to come up with a silly analogy like how "Jeff Goldblum cannot carry a sheep and a chainsaw simultaneously" is not the same thing as saying "Jeff Goldblum cannot carry a chainsaw?"
I'm assuming that it isn't.
No, I said women shouldn't run a startup and have a baby at the same time. Apart from the fact that having a baby unavoidably takes up more of a woman's time than a man's on a biological level (how is babby fed?), the general observation is that women psychologically want to spend more time with their children than men do.
Men and women are largely interchangeable, except around breeding time, where their brains and bodies become very different. Their brains much less so than their bodies, but there's still a lot of instinct built into the human psyche.
As a more general point, while you'll sometimes go wrong with generalizations of the form "women like A while men like B" you'll go wrong less often than you will with the belief that men and women are completely interchangeable on all levels.
My 2nd child was born just months before I quit my job to work full-time on my startup. My co-founder also had his first kid at the same time. We worked like crazy this last summer and just recently closed our first round of funding.
Perhaps we were crazy (our wives definitely thought so) but we pulled it off. We're also only in our late 20's :)
With the proper support - definitely possible. I think doing a startup as a single parent with a baby would be near impossible.
The question is not whether you should or shouldn't pull of your first startup after you have a kid, but what you want your kid to know you as.
Many parent's cocoon once they become parents and become very risk averse.
But there is no more risk doing a startup than there is keeping your job. There is no jobs that are safe. No certain income.
By forcing yourself to become more risk averse (which starting a company perception wise would be) you are actually making yourself and your family a favor IMHO. You grab the bull by the horns and build a situation were risk is an active part of the game instead of being the pink elephant in the room.
Living in Denmark we obviously have many more safety measures than in the US (and also rather high taxes) but as I said at the end of the day you are not more secure in a job than you are in a startup.
Has anyone actually done it and care to share their experiences?
If you want a concrete example though, I know both the founders of Omniture had kids on the way to their IPO and eventual $1.6 billion acquisition.
I am not the sole founder, but I venture to say I have done (and continue to do) my fair share of the work. I work on the design, sales, the user interface, programming, support, server maintenance, maintenance, accounting - nearly everything.
The key to success? I try to make the product a little better each day, even if the changes are tiny (code comments, etc.). I am not able to sit down and bang out code all day due to family obligations, but persistence, focus, and making smart, calculated changes, over a longer period of time can make for a pretty fantastic product.
Also, doing your own support + programming puts you in a unique position to listen, work on, and fix issues that cause the most problems.
Rome wasn't built over night, so they say.
Was going to throw in "while keeping your sanity", but there are a few people who's loved ones already knew they were crazy to begin with ha-ha.
I don't really find myself needing to work a lot of hours to make things happen so I'm able to spend plenty of time with my daughter. I have another kid on the way and while I've scaled back my feature list slightly for my next release I'm not terribly concerned about the impact to the business for a few months while I wait for things to settle down. I might be the exception to this though but so far it's been good.
You're 100% correct about how great children are. Children are totally amazing. My daughter is the happiest person I've ever met. She has no idea what I'm doing or why but she loves having me around. Part of why I started this company was to (eventually) spend a lot of time with her as she gets older. I remind myself of that whenever I get discouraged.
How are you able to support you and your daughter? Is your startup already profitable?
If you don't have a strong support network, can't afford for your partner (wife, husband, whatever) to stay home, can't afford a full-time nanny, or don't have any other form of dedicated help (parents, etc), the chances of launching a successful startup decreases with a baby in the mix.
Nothing is impossible. However, your chances of startup success go down if you're trying to juggle a newborn person with a newborn company. If you don't have help, I could see it being nearly impossible.
Only you are the expert on your life. Reading other peoples' anecdotes is fun, but at the end of the day not often very helpful.
The one piece of advice I would give is to read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/When-Partners-Become-Parents-Couples/d...
It's an account of a study that looked at enough couples for actual trends to emerge. My wife and I found it incredibly useful.
I have been blessed with an incredible support system. My husband and I both worked hard and saved over the last four years, my technical co-founder is an experienced parent of two in his 40s, the community here in Tokyo has been unbelievably supportive and, not to mention my family and close friends who are all aware of my YC application and have agreed to help us in both relocating to the valley and helping us on a rotating schedule to support us and help with our baby, if we are indeed selected.
We have the resources and the support, as Jason has suggested is most critical. I personally think this is a perfect time for me to pursue my start-up, especially in Japan. Women in the workplace and policies here are still significantly behind those in the US.
I've always taken huge risks and gone after what I wanted. This is no exception.
http://takara.posterous.com/resigned-from-my-job-having-a-ba...
The article definitely touches on one thing that is definitely true. Time is now no longer a luxury, it's a gift. So, you must make the most of it. This is driving me to be as efficient as possible. Which is something that I really need and I think it's going to benefit me.
I think the one thing that actually drives me more so than before is that now when I'm working on my business, I feel a lot more motivated to get things done and being successful. My calculated risks are a little more calculated than before. I feel as though this is going to be one of the secrets to my success.
Bottom line: I see this as an advantage...as long as you have that support.
I had my first child while I was still working + studying, and yes I agree that if I was doing my startup then I would have probably gone through major shock.
Having already had my first child, with the birth of my second and doing my startup, I knew what to kinda expect for the first few months + delivery. One of the first things I did, and realized, was that in order to have a good balance between the two, I had to get rid of the data plan on my phone. Otherwise, I wouldn't be 'in the moment' with my kids when I needed to be.
The result has been phenomenal. When I only have a few hours to get everything done that I need to do, I get a lot done. Still could achieve more, but am much more productive for myself with two kids than I was working for someone else with one kid.
I have also realized that it is better to do this while they are young enough to not remember these years too much. While I spend as much time with them as I can, the reality is that I will have to spend a lot of time working. But the trade-off is that if I do this now, in the first 5 - 10 years of their lives, then we can all enjoy more time and life in a different way when I am in my 30s and they are 8+.
Please do NOT interpret that as me neglecting them. I am lucky enough to be in a situation where there is a lot of support (in-laws live on the same property and we have a nanny - I live in Jamaica so the cost of living is much lower than the US, so it doesn't drain my bank account too much) for my wife and she is VERY supportive. She is being mom full-time, which significantly helps.
That being said, I make sure to bathe them a few evenings for the week and usually end up putting my eldest to bed 3/7 nights for the week (if not more, depending on what's happening with the family). Bedtime includes about 1 - 2 hours of dedicated them time - including stories, etc.
I have also agreed, with my wife, that I will take the night shift on our 7 week old. That usually means that I am up until anywhere between 5 - 7am with her, feeding her and putting her back to sleep in intervals. So I try to do as much work as I can while she sleeps during the nights.
As a result of that, I wake up about midday everyday and get straight to work. Usually work until 6pm, where I transition into evening routine. I don't know how long this will be sustainable for, but my wife is very flexible and supportive.
Some people might say I am crazy for doing a startup now (with 2 young kids), while many of my friends are working at bigshot jobs in the corporate world, but I think this is the more prudent route for the security and stability of my family in the long term.
However, I can guarantee on most days to have 90 minutes to 120 minutes of complete joy with my kids, and weekends that take me away from 'office work'.
And, that 36 hour weekend break is a weekly opportunity I have to review, contemplate, reprioritise--mostly holding this stuff in my head for the weekend. It was hard work at first and now it's something that I look forward to.
On the downside the costs of failure are disproportionately higher.
But that said - focus counts for a lot.
The biggest change you'll find is that there's basically zero time left for your personal coding and hacking interests: setting up that home Samba server or writing an open-source project that isn't startup-related just never seem to have time to happen.
I highly recommend finding a way to work from home as much as possible for the early years. The hours you lose on your commute are valuable time. Both startups (dotspots.com and gri.pe) are both zero-office affairs which meshed reasonably well with my family life. It also helps to be a Canadian: the expenses to cover food, utilities and mortgage aren't that hard to meet.
A lot of time i struggle with the ideas give to my family a better future or a better present, because as long as my experience says you have to take a lot of family time in order to success in your dreams and projects, specially when you are in a "regular" job.
Thanks god, now with the help of my wife we are getting back to work.
For me its all about having resources and support, Jason is quite fortunate because he is wealthy and can afford all the extras like nanny's, night nurses, etc, so the load on his spouse is much manageable.
On the flip side if your not wealthy its going to be much harder and puts you in the position that you need to take a decent salary if your going to go full time on your startup, which means you need traction and funding or a profitable business.
Parenting is a fabulous example of bootstrapping - you get much craftier, less wasteful, and in fact may have more time on your hands because your at home more. Once the kids go to sleep - start hacking away at your projects.
I would also say that when you have kids you appreciate some of the perks of normal job more like vacation time, steady income and health care benefits etc.
We've been bootstrapping our company for 2 years now and I have 2 kids (4 and 2 yrs) and it has somehow worked but not without a lot of extra challenges. I'm hoping that at this point we have enough traction to take it to an Angel/VC and get some funding so I can digg in 150%.
... the man doesn't sleep!
Agree with other comments that fewer all night sprints, some support, and profitability are more of a prerequisite though.
Maybe YCombinator and a baby are not possible? (Unless you are pg)
Cyril Connolly said “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.”
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2007/09/jasonheartb...