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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?

#321

Post by raxits »

Depends on -

1. Your skills - Why? - How much you need to spend on Human resource? to reach PMF

2. Real dependancy on you of your family - Is your wife working/side passive income etc so you can ditch your job

3. Your Startup/Product Idea & how much time will it take to reach MVP and ramen profitable -

4. Your family's willingness to *sacrifice social pressure*. - Scarifying lifestyle/current standard of living is hard, more harder is to get rid of "What other people/social circle of your family will tell/think" of the new lifestyle,

5. Opportunity cost of doing job (or leaving job).

Most of people have hesitation of leaving job, so exact decision you only need to take (or not take).

Advice - Don't regret on whatever decision you take.

Let's say if you stick to job and same idea/product someone else become big big, No need to regret and vice versa.

Context about me 1. I left Software job after 7Yrs and bootstrapping since 10+ yr. Ups and Downs are part of life. COVID has made life bit worsen (as we are in daily commute!) 2. I am 35+ yo single, My parents don't depends on me, No-Unwanted-expense, from India

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

#322

Post by cutthegrass2 »

narcraft wrote: post #191
datalopers wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Is Elon Musk no longer a billionaire? Otherwise, hard to say that his success has ended or diminished in any meaningful way.

From a recent count I saw, Elon could afford to loose $100B and still be the richest person on the planet.

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

#323

Post by paulryanrogers »

j45 wrote: post #316
paulryanrogers wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right it's a lottery, with very expensive tickets. You may have to pay with years of your life for each one, possibly significant others.

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.

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

#324

Post by fdgsdfogijq »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #153

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, bootstra…

This is a great comment, thanks for posting

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

#325

Post by gustavoamigo »

Creating a startup is a huge risk taking endeavour, if there are factors in your life that might distract you from this like how you are going to pay mortgage or will I have time to be with my kids/wife, probably you shouldn't do it. Also, keep in mind that there are few possible outcomes to a startup - 1) it succeeds and you get rich, 2) it fails miserably and you are left with a huge debt that you might never be able to pay in a lifetime (this risk is real, I've seen it), 3) it fails, but you get away no debt, 4) it kind of succeeds, but it becomes a boring existential company that barely pays your bills and no one is interested in buying it.

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

#326

Post by laterblackbird »

You're not ready to run a startup. I give you permission to not be an entrepreneur. Go drive Uber for some extra cash, and be done. Until you can ignore everyone's advice here and do it anyway, against all odds, you're not ready. Think you can handle it? THEN JUST DO IT ALREADY.

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

#327

Post by laterblackbird »

julianlam wrote: post #77
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…

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.

"The harder I work, the luckier I get."

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

#328

Post by 999900000999 »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #313
999900000999 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm making ultra small games like infinite runners, and other procedurally generated generated games. The problem is risk vs reward. Even a modestly sized game will cost millions since you need to compete with some of the biggest names in the industry.I really tried to make a graphically intense game with Unity's HDRP, but I'm still not able to match the polish of a AAA game. Aside from that, there's too many games b…

That's what really kills me. There are so many great devs out there making awesome stuff, and I can't **ing find any of it to play because I'm constantly being bombarded with terrible big corporate shovelware casino crap ah well, I hope you strike it big!

I'm open to ideas on monetization.

I don't need to strike it big, 500$ a month would be more than enough to motivate me. Hell, 500 plays per month would be enough.

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

#329

Post by ip26 »

Kranar wrote: post #194
saulpw wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

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.

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