Comment by sridharvembu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sridharvembu | Hacker News Reader

I started my company (Zoho Corp) after I got married and our son was born within a couple of years of it. One co-founder already had a kid by the time we got started. It helped that none of us were into "youth culture" but more of a "geek culture" - even at 23, we were far more interested in seeking out people to discuss The Economist than to go to a bar ... I am not ashamed to admit it!

My point is you can have a reasonably normal family life and you can build a company. These are not mutually exclusive. Some of the insane stuff people say they have had to do (30 hours of nonstop coding and so on) ... I am not sure all of that is required for success. Hard work, yes, many sacrifices, yes, but we can get a lot done in a 50 hour focused work-week, and we don't have to sacrifice all normal human relationships (parents, spouses, kids, friendships...) to build a company. What would be the point of that?

Yes, of course, if I had set a goal that we had to exit in 4 years it would have been a different story.

Would you have been able to start it _as_ your son was born? I am just curious as to how important you think the overall timeline was.

Also, I think it is an interesting idea to contrast "youth culture" and "geek culture".

My current goals are just to be as effective a person as possible, work on my entrepreneurial skills, and just hope that when I do have children that I am a good enough entrepreneur to both pay the bills and be able to spend quality time with my family. It worries me that I may not be to that point when the time eventually arrives.

I haven't done it (i.e start the company _as_ the kid was born) so I can't be sure but he was born during the most hectic phase of the company, bootstrapping our way up, with lots of travel. Even during that time, I still had plenty of time to enjoy watching him grow up.

The best lesson for me was watching my co-founder Tony Thomas, who could maintain his Buddha-like calm in the face of trying circumstances. He was the one who taught me it is possible to keep that balance.

Of course, I haven't watched any television in years (for the longest time, I didn't even own a TV set) and I cannot name any recent music band but thanks to the Economist-habit, I can quote the per-capita GDP of most countries within 10-20%

So you have to make judicious choices, but it is possible to achieve that balance between family life and entrepreneurship.

Thanks for that.

Amazing story you have Sridhar (context - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sridhar_Vembu)

Congratulations on building an awesome company and being totally humble about it. I wish stories like yours were told more to put startups, life and what's important into perspective.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com