31–40 of 51 posts
There was a study that showed that a vast majority of (famous) mathematicians did most and best of their work before getting married. Not that it is indicative of how things are in 21st century, but still an interesting anecdote.
Also "famous mathematician" is a bit of an oxymoron. All fame is local, and fame in mathematics even more so.
One problem to consider if you are working on your startup from home is the danger of constant interruptions. It can be hard on your family, especially your wife, to "not be allowed" to interrupt you. You have to remember that your family interrupts you because they care about you and they want you involved in their lives, but at the same time you have to find a way to tactfully get them to stay away from your office…
This is so true. I have a really hard time getting my girl friend to understand that I can't carry a conversation while coding... I brought it on myself trying to work in the same room she does though. If I could I would 100% have a private area to work in. I dream of having a house with a PRIVATE study right now.
1) A start-up is just a business of your own design. It may be that you're in tech but the whole concept of running the business side of things is really no different from opening your own restaurant, dry cleaners, or becoming some sort of contractor or realtor. You are self employed and must rely on yourself to bring home the bacon. The vast majority of people in the world are in this position (and create the most jobs according to the latest surveys).
2) Work is not life if you also wish to have a family. If you prioritize work over family then you are bound to fail at one or both. Through proper time/resource management you can enjoy both immensely and successfully.
I have a wife and two kids. They do take up (I mean, deserve and I enjoy giving) a lot of time. Having a family is incredibly exciting and there ar joys to be found there that cannot be found anywhere else. If, however, you prioritize work over them you will quickly find yourself on the road to an unhappy household. I know far too many who ended up in divorce and have nothing but regrets for the opportunity they squandered there.
A very wise and successful entrepreneur once remarked to me when I asked them about balancing work and family that I would likely make as much money as I did even if I didn't work as long as I did. It's not about putting in all those hours. It's about putting in smarter hours, delegating and optimizing. Take your vacations, hire interns, and enjoy your life (not at the expense of the business or the family).
Oh, and one more VERY important point: Marry someone who knows your tendencies to be an entrepreneur (ie risk taker) and will support you through thick and thin (and when things get too thin have the sense to stop), The biggest problems always start when the partner does not support the rolling of the dice. Family must always come first. Always.
Nothing motivates like a rock chick kicking through door in boots and telling you "we killed baby!" :-D
We both get up around noon and get on our laptops. Sometimes she walks around the apartment like a zombie, humming to herself, then grabs the guitars and goes into frantic improv and song writing. I walk around too, with a notepad, and run to Emacs to jot down ideas. It's hypnotic to code to the sound of the same chords being played over and over again. I could hear a song change from form to another, over the span of a few hours, just as my code migrates from a scratch buffer, to its own file, then to a full fledged directory with a page-long Changelog.
We both go through the hustle; we collect dimes from various paypal and CC accounts, drive to venues and get cash, chase invoices, and by the end of the week we have a fat little wallet that we're giddy over.
I love my girl.
My strong suggestion: do the startup before getting married, but while you live with your potential future spouse under marriage-like conditions. My personal experience: I had a live-in gf (and possible future spouse), and I spent about a year in startup crunch mode on an academic research project (which I hoped to leverage into a future startup). It put a major strain on our relationship - she worked outside the hom…
I will play contrarian and argue the opposite side of it.
No matter how well some people manage to integrate their work life with their family life, they would still be more free to compete if they had no family.
Maybe you have created enterprise software and a large company in Texas, USA, calls you and asks to come pitch to the CEO tomorrow. How free are you to get out of any personal obligations so you can be there in Texas tomorrow?
Maybe you are selling support for open source software, are you free to work 80 hours a week for the first 2 years, just to get things going?
Maybe you are focused on electronics in Asia and you are trying to learn about the various laws and electrical infrastructure requirements in each country. It would also be nice to know something about the culture of these countries, their customs and history - each week, do you put an extra 5 hours toward learning background information about these countries, or do you put that extra 5 hours toward your personal relationship?
My overall feeling is that you can start a personal relationship at any point between the age of 14 and 84, but the first 2 years you are trying to get a startup off the ground is unique, and I think during those 2 years, much of the rest of your life should be put on hold.
If you end up competing against my startup, and I'm putting in 10% more than time than you, then you better be 10% smarter than me to balance things out. In my case, that is not very difficult, I am fairly stupid so you might well be 10% smarter than me, but you might eventually face competition that is, in fact, smarter than you, and willing to put in a lot more time than you. What then?
At the risk of sounding like some kind of Zen guru, I do think you need to ask yourself what you truly want. While we are all subject to random chance, there is a large extent to which we can control our lives, and to that extent you will create the life that you strive for. What you think you want may be different from what you actually want, and you'd do well to think carefully about any discrepancy between your stated goals and your actual actions.
Possibly one way to figure out what you would be comfortable with would be to think about losing. If you end up competing in a particular niche, against someone just as smart as you, and your competitor wins because they work 100 hours a week, whereas you decide that your personal relationship, and mental health, are important, so you only work 40 hours a week, then will you be okay with losing? Will you go on to have a happy life, or will you look back later and have regrets? In the book The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People the author Stephen Covey suggests "Begin with the end in mind." That's applicable here. Think about what outcomes you'd be comfortable with, and let that shape your actions.
Since I'm playing the contrarian here, I will try to end on a negative note: you will have more chance of success the less energy you invest in your relationship. You might be much happier if you focus on your relationship, but we are not talking about happiness here, only the success of your startup. Being able to devote 100% of your energy to your startup might only give you a very slight edge compared to other startup entrepreneurs, but every little bit of an edge helps.
It's the best. The year I lived in with my fiancee was the most enjoyable. She is a gigging musician, so we pretty much see eye to eye. Nothing motivates like a rock chick kicking through door in boots and telling you "we killed baby!" :-D We both get up around noon and get on our laptops. Sometimes she walks around the apartment like a zombie, humming to herself, then grabs the guitars and goes into frantic improv a…
"Startups take over your life" is a social construct. It happens because we expect it to happen, because we model it as "success", because we demand it from ourselves, and because we look at anyone who it isn't happening to as a failure. My business is, in many ways (such as measuring by hours), the easiest job I've ever had.
I have been in several startups, and a couple of projects in not-large companies. Much of this time it was a struggle not to be doing the project all the time.
The things that we were working on I found seriously personally exciting, and in fact, the most recent one, my advisor in the effort all but forced me to keep "reasonable" hours. Reasonable converged on 12 hours.