Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible?
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Re: Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible?
#2But do you have to be willing to give up a real bond with your kids to be an entrepreneur?
I don't think so. I work about 60 hours a week and despite that I spend about 3 hours per work day with my daughter (more than most of my salaried friends can pull off) and 2 full days a week "off" with her too (although I then often work after she's gone to sleep).
I think the real danger is lengthy commuting or needing to be away from home a lot. Not every business requires this, but for those that do, it's those multiple nights aways and lost meals, bathtimes and bedtimes that could eat away at the bond. Pick your battles wisely, though, and you can keep it up.
Re: Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible?
#3But do you have to be willing to give up a real bond with your kids to be an entrepreneur? I don't think so. I work about 60 hours a week and despite that I spend about 3 hours per work day with my daughter (more than most of my salaried friends can pull off) and 2 full days a week "off" with her too (although I then often work after she's gone to sleep). I think the real danger is lengthy commuting or needing to be…
If the startup is on the Internet that should help a bit (working from home sometimes).
But I don't know exactly, I don't have kids yet.
Re: Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible?
#4But do you have to be willing to give up a real bond with your kids to be an entrepreneur? I don't think so. I work about 60 hours a week and despite that I spend about 3 hours per work day with my daughter (more than most of my salaried friends can pull off) and 2 full days a week "off" with her too (although I then often work after she's gone to sleep). I think the real danger is lengthy commuting or needing to be…
If the startup is on the Internet that should help a bit (working from home sometimes). But I don't know exactly, I don't have kids yet.
I rarely work from home now (beyond e-mails on the Air) since I found it inefficient and like to split family/work, but.. my office is a 5 minute drive away so that sure helps :-)
Re: Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible?
#5I might be alone in this, but I'm getting a little tired of this particular author's linkbait articles. I noticed them on GigaOm first (mostly in her writing about coworking) and now this.
Re: Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible?
#6"He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief." — Francis Bacon
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/preamble/hostages-to-fortune...
Re: Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible?
#7potentially harder? of course. impossible? of course not.
Re: Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible?
#8potentially harder? of course. impossible? of course not.
Sheryl Sandberg shows it is not impossible.
Marcus Pincus, the same.
And probably there are more...but yes, it is hard and takes a lot of understanding from both.
Re: Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible?
#9Maybe in the very early stages of a start-up work-life balance is likely to be out of control. However, family might be a strong asset to an entrepreneur. When a founder enters a depressive period (no traction, few users), family becomes his most important escape.
Family can provide founders with several advantages: time compression can serve as an incentive to be more efficient, a wife/husband can provide financial/emotional support in hard times and family members can serve the venture in many additional ways (early product adoption, business connections, product evangelism, etc).
An unhealthy work-life balance is unsustainable in the long term. Workaholism is not the cause of success, is merely correlated to it because frequently significant others are not educated about start-up life.
All and all, I think that if we integrate family into our start-up life, we'll become more robust entrepreneurs. A great example of this are Kevin and Julia Hartz of Eventbrite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeaR9BP5b0k
Re: Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible?
#10this is barely an article IMO. Not much is discussed, not much is given thought - it simply rehashes some quotes found elsewhere online and leaves it at that.
I'm interested in the conversation that could happen here, but I feel the article itself is weak.
As for Ambitious Entrepreneurship and having a family - I guess it's possible to those that decide it is, and is not possible to those that decide it isn't. I for one have a daughter and another one due in a month - and i make time for both my ambitions and my family. It's obviously not easy - but really what has been worth pursuing that has been easy in life?