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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?

#231

Post by saluki »

tchock23 wrote: post #161

Rob Walling coined the "Stair Step Approach" as a way to get yourself into startups in a lower risk way: https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stair-step-method-of-b... He has also talked about it on his "Startups for the Rest of Us" podcast: https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-222-... Might be worth trying Rob's approach before leaving your job and betting the farm on a startup idea...

Definitely listen to StartUpsForTheRestofUs.

Do not leave your job! There are lots of ways to begin your journey to having your own company/startup.

Being employed is a great source of bootstrap funding.

I also highly recommend @DHH startup school talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

You have plenty of time. Save up and use your 'extra time' wisely.

Rob's stair step approach is a great way to get started.

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

#232

Post by alexchantavy »

alfl wrote: post #190

The typical response (for example, I've seen Patio11 say this) is: don't make your life harder than necessary by including big life changes in your startup journey. Running a company is hard, do it the easy way. That said, I did this with the love and support of my wife -- she wanted (and wants) to help me Live The Dream (tm). We got married, bought property, and had a kid while she worked full time and I started my…

> it's literally the first question most investors ask newbies

What's the first question, "is this a side hustle"?

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

#234

Post by ggregoire »

Sounds like you are in the US, so my answer won't be helpful for you, but in case some Europeans are reading the comments:

Check if your government can help you start your own business.

For instance in France, you can sign up for a program called "Aide à la création d'entreprise" [1], which gives you the rights to access like 1 year of your unemployment insurance compensation ("indemnisation d'assurance chômage"). If your income was 2 or 3 times above your spendings, it should be way enough to maintain your standard of living during 1 year, while working full time on your project. Then after this period, if you project didn't succeed, you can move on and look for a job. You basically take 0 risks.

[1] https://entreprendre.service-public.fr/vosdroits/N16153

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

#235

Post by product1087 »

Xcelerate wrote: post #92
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…

> 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…

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.

Source: 2 kids, 4 and 6.

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

#236

Post by brntsllvn »

Some startup "studios" (e.g. Fractal, PSL, Struck) pay founders on day 1 for just this reason.

The tradeoff is the absurd amount of equity you concede to the studios - who are in essence taking advantage of your financial situation - which ends up causing many serious issues down the road.

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

#237

Post by golemiprague »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#238

Post by FrankLicea »

I co-founded Howdy.com (YC W21) about 3 years ago. It's a platform for building your own dev teams in Latin America; automate vetting, payroll, offices, equipment, etc. We're profitable and just closed a series-A.

Here's the kicker: My co-founder and I both have kids, family, mortgages. Here's how I did it in the years leading up to and during:

- I saved for years with the idea that I was going to use that money for entrepreneurship

- I was upfront with my spouse and kids about the amount of effort, risk and potential rewards; i could point to a successful dev/PM career as evidence that I could succeed

- Keeping the same standard of living was impossible, we had to budget for a new level of comfort

- We had runway timetable in mind to show some progress

- Our business approach had to be profitable from the start

Your business failure rate doesn't need to be 90% if you're flexible about the problem you're pursuing. We chose an idea that allowed us to bring in at least a little money to lengthen our personal runway. Once we had a sustainable business, it was easier to approach investors and pivot slightly to the market dominating, high risk/high reward version of our idea.

Hope this helps! Happy to chat about this with anyone who's interested in doing the same! f at howdy.com

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

#239

Post by kanwisher »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #166
julianlam wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Alternatively, maybe your dad owns an emerald mine? Always an option!

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

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

#240

Post by TruthWillHurt »

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…

lol founders taking a salary... I got 5 startups for you to fund!

Founders need to show a lot of work done / churn to get VC backed.

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