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Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?

#151

Post by la64710 »

earino wrote: post #6

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 iden…

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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?

#152

Post by Kalanos »

higeorge13 wrote: post #59
lpolovets wrote: post #41

VC here. If you're building a bootstrapped business, then starting as a side project and building up revenue until you can go full time is probably the way to go. If you're going the venture-backed route, I think there's a misconception that there's no salary or minimal salary at early stages when you're funded, but this is not true. Most founders take a reasonable salary, where reasonably is defined more by your per…

Are we even allowed to do side projects? What if our employer claims ownership or even conflicts of interest with what we are building? How will i even present it into hn or producthunt with my name and all my credentials while i am still working somewhere else? Any employer would fire us on the spot if they found out, wouldn’t they?

unless you have registered your invention with the employer during the hiring process, it belongs to them

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?

#153

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

Wow so many negative comments.

It is easy to start a startup in your 30s. In fact that is the only time you should start one. You finally have some life experiences to build a startup around.

By 30 you should have enough money saved to run for a year or two.

Your startup idea total addressable market should be clear. If it is close to a billion, go VC funded.

If it is in the 10s of millions to a few hundred, bootstrap.

Next, you have kids. You cannot faff around with company name, logo and such nonsense.

You need to focus on getting money in the door. So then where is your first customer? Hopefully with your 30 year of experience you have spotted someone already. Go to them and tell them that whatever they are looking for, your startup provides. Doesn't matter what they ask for, tell them yes it does that, the best in the industry. Take their money to book a spot as you are doing "revolving entries."

Do at least 5 of these. Tell them some nonsense about the price being a lot more but you are charging much less etc for them to be part of the existing cohort. This is important. Nobody wants to enter the train first. They want to be part of a journey where there are existing passengers.

Once you have money in your business account that is when you can start hiring someone to build a really scrappy version of your product. While all of this is happening make sure to always keep on getting new customers and getting money into the account. Business is about getting money into the business account. Never lose sight of that.

Now, you should have a huge dream about what your business can be. The larger the dream the better. If you can promise the moon and the stars and you have a total addressable market of about a $1 billion reach out to VCs, and ask for millions of dollars.

The larger amount you ask the more it'll seem to them that you have some special sauce. Once again make sure that you lie through your teeth because VCs don't understand anything and they're really easy to fool. Talk about changing the world and network meshes and AI and all those things. Get a good pitch deck designer.

Your only loyalty is to your customers and your problems space. Everybody else is a goose that needs to be squeezed. Once you reach your series B and Cs, losing is no longer an option. Make sure you sell secondaries and get at least $5 million in your personal bank account to derisk any future problems. From then on the world is your oyster.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?

#154

Post by lazide »

la64710 wrote: post #151
earino wrote: post #6

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 iden…

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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?

#155

Post by brailsafe »

saulpw wrote: post #141
Xcelerate wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 ca…

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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?

#156

Post by lazide »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #148
earino wrote: post #6

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 iden…

> 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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?

#157

Post by cellis »

siruva07 wrote: post #47

You don't. Pick the right startup to work for. Employee #100 at Facebook made a lot more than most startup founders ever did.

For everyone who picked Facebook there were thousands that didn't, and they certainly didn't do better than average.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?

#158

Post by antisthenes »

1. The first thing you do should be discussing this with your wife, not HN. If she's not on board with it, that's probably the first thing you're going to want to work on. If it doesn't seem like she's ever going to be on board, you have an uphill battle that you are going to lose in all likelihood.

2. Have you done market research? Needed startup capital? Have enough connections that in the case of failure you can just go back to a similar job in the industry?

> Im not sure how to pay my bills while looking for product-market-fit.

Yeah, you're going to want to test this before quitting your job. I think realistically if you can't get at least 2-3 paying customers for your product without quitting your day job, your chances of making it are pretty slim.

> Are all startups at my age generally side hustles that become profitable enough to quit my day job?

For someone like you, most likely yes. For someone who's a serial entrepreneur, probably not, because they can rely on their prior businesses to test out new ideas.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start a startup in your 30s when you have wife/kids/mortgage?

#159

Post by lazide »

n4r9 wrote: post #126
generalizations wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Then figure you have 10-20 active years left, and do you really want to spend 5-10 of them on a startup?

A lot of people do! The average age of a successful startup founder in 2020 was 45: https://economica.org.uk/research-the-average-age-of-a-succe...

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.

There is a lot of self-selection bias going on.

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