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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?

#81

Post by etothepii »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #44
etothepii wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout my career I'd survived 7 redundancy rounds. One time I chose not to survive. When management raised the idea of moving my team to Ireland I negotiated for exit payment rather than making the usual case about how important my role was.

Were you in fintech or other highly classified work? I've only heard of employers paying (former?) employees for basically a year of their salary on "garden leave", where the employee is kept on the payroll without doing any work in order to prevent them being able to bring trade secrets to a competitor

I was a data scientist at an insurance company. Was a fairly standard redundancy based payment but with a little bit extra to avoid it being a redundancy and to get a mutual non-disparagement agreement. Basically the bonus for the year, 3 months garden leave, 8 weeks redundancy pay, taxes, pension contribution, and share scheme buyout etc.

When I'd avoided redundancies at previous employer (large bank) some really great terms had been offered.

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

#82

Post by higeorge13 »

tracker1 wrote: post #72
higeorge13 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Depends on the employer and where you live... you may have to get permission or specific exclusion when you start a job. As long as there isn't overlap with the business in question, I haven't experienced an issue working on the side. Note: working on the side is not drawing multiple FTE salaries... but actual work outside business hours.

I don’t know, the conflict of interest especially in saas is tricky. Let’s assume that I build some niche etl tool, my employer deals with data etl for a certain market, how can i safely determine that my side project doesn’t interfere with their business? Not even lawyers can determine this. And what about the working hours overlap? Who knows except my commits to my repo and myself? I don’t know, side projects seem like a bad advice as they probably increase current job insecurity imo..

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

#83

Post by dangus »

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…

I disagree with your advice, because it amounts to "sit around and do nothing, give up on your goals."

I know someone who has a family who stated a side business in their spare time in their 30's.

It started extremely modestly using just some spare time, and I think a lot of people have at least some spare time. The average person spends, what, 4 hours a day watching TV? If OP has an hour a day they can make at least some progress.

This person also uses freelancers to help achieve chunks of work where they aren't experts. A modest amount of savings can pay for some of these deliverables.

I know someone else who sells baked goods at farmers markets. They put some time into baking and posting to social media but it's a side gig. Another person I know got together with a group to help share the effort and they're working on a hummus business (again, selling at farmers markets). These are all people with families and day jobs.

Instead of that fatalist do-nothing advice of "wait until you're an empty nester," I'd say "start small." Don't expect to be a massively scaling SaaS thing. Don't expect to replace your income, certainly not within ~5 years. Don't try to build some wildly complicated product. Budget your time, don't neglect your personal life. Focus on solving a simple pain point for a specific type of customer.

The other thing I'd warn OP about: don't start a business for the wrong reason. The wrong reason is dreaming of a lottery ticket out of wage slavery. The right reason is that you've identified an area that you think has potential to help someone else achieve a positive outcome, especially an area where you have some kind of expertise.

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

#84

Post by foobarian »

pc86 wrote: post #50
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…

If you're not a FAANG engineer, and like 95% of people work somewhere that doesn't give you a ton of stock or RSUs, and you don't live in a super expensive metro, $100-150k is basically strong mid/weak senior money. I know plenty of places hiring with no stock, no bonuses, and seniors top out at $160k or so. They hire capable engineers no problem. With that in mind, taking a pay cut into the middle of that range to d…

I think the problem is not the paycut, so much as you suddenly work 80 hour weeks and never see your kids.

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

#85

Post by intrasight »

Once you have capital, you can choose how to put that capital to work. By capital, I mean your savings. As it's your hard-earned capital, invest in something safe. What I was taught in an entrepreneurship class at GSIA was to invest in a franchise of a growing brand that you think you would enjoy being a part of. Another common path is rental real estate. Both ideas are "start-ups" broadly defined.

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

#87

Post by jonahbenton »

There are all sorts of paths. Knowing nothing about you I would council holding your powder. Put time into the kids and partner and keep the side hustles to hobbies/participating as a chicken (see Chicken vs Pig fable) at most in the community. Much much more important on any timescale for both your and their happiness and health to keep attention focused on them.

It can be very frustrating/challenging to the part of you that wants to do the startup to do this, of course- that frustration in itself is valuable experience. The reason so many have successful startups in their 40s and 50s is not because they tried and failed at startups in their 30s. They didn't, and instead found ways to improve their impulse regulation, decision making, relationship management- and their financial standing. Speaking very much from personal experience, so much about new ventures becomes easier when equipped with strengths in these areas.

Manage the dopamine. Don't let it manage you.

Best wishes.

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

#88

Post by earino »

generalizations wrote: post #80
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…

> 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?

I'm not sure I understand. But I think my answer is, "yes, I would!"

By that point, hopefully I have enough self knowledge to understand what motivates me and what my true competitive advantages are. I also hopefully have a strong network I can leverage to help me with any blind spots I may still carry. And to spend 5-10 years working on something that I truly am passionate about, which I've worked hard to have the resources to do without encumbering others, sounds rather nice!

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

#89

Post by dsr_ »

You would be stupid if you quit in order to start something with a 90% failure rate. Don't be stupid.

Instead, figure out what business idea you can accomplish that would have a 10% failure rate -- a 90% chance of success.

While you're doing that, accumulate capital, so that you have at two years of complete living expenses in the bank.

When you have both of those things, you can discuss taking a year to do a startup, with a one year ramp. At the end of the year, you evaluate:

- is this close enough to success that you should definitely continue?

- is this almost ready, and you are no more than 3 months away from a go/no-go?

- is it time to end it, take a couple of months off to be with your family, and then have 10 months to look for a new job?

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

#90

Post by aynyc »

generalizations wrote: post #80
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…

> 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?

For some people, spending 5-10 years on their dreams in their 50s is totally worth it.
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