Ask YC: "Can a 40 year old, married with 3 children, start a start-up?"

I can't speak for Ed, but "fail" and "can't" are still very much words in my vocabulary, and I worry almost daily that we can't build the product we'd want to use and will fail in the market. Maybe that's a problem for me. It does seem to be a negative when talking to people about my startup; they pick up cracks in the facade of perfect confidence fairly often.

But I don't want to be blindsided by potential problems; I want to catch them as quickly as possible so they can be fixed. My role in the startup has always been the engineer, and as an engineer, it's my job to be pessimistic. (I used to have a business-type cofounder who was much more gung-ho, but he left for B-school, and now I've gotta do both. Concentrating on the product first...)

One of my favorite quotes, though, is:

"Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway."

I'd much rather imagine everything that can go wrong now than be blindsided by it later.

One of the few people I have respect for in my career had a phase for this regarding the progress of projects, and I think it applies to start-ups in the sense that sometimes people are blinkered about what they are doing and that is this:

"Disappoint early"

In other words, as soon as you are aware of a problem - Raise it. And then discuss it and work it out.

you set your limits on your own mind, just be equally idealistic as realistic.

As a start-upper with wife and kids I have some perspective to add. Our startup essentially began on the day my first child was born. I was running back and forth between the hospital and a pair of sales offices arranging a demo for our first large corporate client. We did land the contract, I was there for the birth of my son. It was the most stressful day I've ever had.

Here's the advice: Its not just you starting the startup.

If I had a different kind of wife, someone timid, fearful or unwilling to adjust from a standard of living to which she had become accustomed, my startup would have been impossible.

Your wife has to have the bug as well even if shes not directly involved. If instead you get a "whatever you want dear as long as we still have enough money for X (soccer, preschool, shoe-shopping, cabletv... whatever), you are already done.

The two of you can do it together. You can't do it alone. The bright side? You've already got your co-founder. That might also be the downside.

Whiten,

You can definitely do it. My story might help encourage you a bit.

Being a bit older when you start your business can work to your advantage. The reason? You've probably had time to work in another field and see real-world needs in some particular niche. These would be unmet needs that recent graduates might not be able to see. The younger guys do amazing things that blow my mind, but there are tons of opportunities that are overlooked because they are smaller (but still HIGHLY profitable) demographics that don't entice those who want to "change the world."

(I started writing this and then notice that nostrademons made virtually the same point, so I just want to "second" what nostrademons said.)

In my particular case, I worked at an art gallery and over the course of a decade learned the art business inside and out. I now have connections throughout the art industry. About seven years ago, I got the idea to build a little web application helps painters build websites and market their artwork online.

(BTW - I have been astounded at the similarities I, as an aspiring hacker, have with my painter customers, and just within the past few months I've learned of PG's book "Hackers and Painters.")

At first, I only had 5-6 hours ONE DAY A WEEK to devote to developing the application. I had to learn everything. I hadn't programmed seriously in over a decade, so progress was very slow at first. Still, within two months I had my first customer.

I continued to build the application following my one-day-a-week schedule for years. I wasn't willing to give up my job income, so I just kept my little web application going on the side and spent roughly 5 hours a week improving it on my days off.

At the end of year one I had 30 customers. At the end of year 2 I had 60. Year 3? 120 customers (see a pattern?). At the end of year 4 I had 240 customers and finally had the courage to go full-time.

That was three years ago and today I have 2,000 customers - enough to provide a good income for me and my employees . . . and still growing. And I finally get do do what all hackers want to do...code! I now code at least five hours a day (although when my wife is out of town, that number balloons to 36 hour marathons, BTW - thank God you have a wife.....it forces you to have a life too).

I highly respect the 37 Signals crew and I agree with them: Don't focus on building a STARTUP, focus on building a BUSINESS.

If there is a niche or industry that you have deep knowledge of....that will help you as nostrademons said above. You will have knowledge and hopefully, connections. It generally puts you in a situation where you have much less competition. And even the competition you do have isn't likely to be as knowledgeable about your customers' needs as you are. In my situation, I generally know how artists need to market their artwork better than they do (and providing that help to them is part of our service).

Is this route slower? Yes. Is it safer? Of course. But, it my case, I couldn't afford to simply quit my job, so it was the only route possible.

When I started I wasn't really even planning on it to become a full time venture, so chances are, you could start on the side and get profitable in a fraction of the time it took me. I knew nothing about building an online company. The fact that you are following and posting on "Hacker News" shows that you light-years ahead of where I was when I started out.