Kids are startups
rondam.blogspot.com
Kids are startups
1–10 of 19 posts
Re: Kids are startups
#2I don't think you read the answer properly. The response was "it's impossible to plan for" and your answer again is "you should plan ahead".
And I actually do think the fact that you don't have kids does mean you don't know how hard it is. (It's like me saying I know the physical act of childbirth is hard, but I think it's certainly not the same as me going through it.)
Re: Kids are startups
#3I don't think you read the answer properly. The response was "it's impossible to plan for" and your answer again is "you should plan ahead". And I actually do think the fact that you don't have kids does mean you don't know how hard it is. (It's like me saying I know the physical act of childbirth is hard, but I think it's certainly not the same as me going through it.)
Dwight Eisenhower famously said, "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
My point is that it is NOT impossible to plan for. Many aspects of having kids are quite predictable, including all the issues that the OP was asking about. I've tweaked the blog post a bit to hopefully make this clearer.
P.S. And maybe I don't really know how hard it is to raise kids. It may well be even harder than I imagine. But that doesn't change the fact that anyone who waits until two months after the kid is born to figure out who is going to take care of it has not planned ahead adequately.
Re: Kids are startups
#4I don't think you read the answer properly. The response was "it's impossible to plan for" and your answer again is "you should plan ahead". And I actually do think the fact that you don't have kids does mean you don't know how hard it is. (It's like me saying I know the physical act of childbirth is hard, but I think it's certainly not the same as me going through it.)
[deleted]
Re: Kids are startups
#5Someone is wrong on the internet?
Re: Kids are startups
#6>> I am in my mid-forties, married, with no kids. But that does not mean that I do not know how hard it is to raise kids.
You really don't know how hard it is to raise kids. And with all due respect, just so you know, kids are not startups.
Re: Kids are startups
#7I enjoyed this post. For what it's worth, I often think of my startup as a kid (the analogy works both ways). Once the startup website went "live", it reminded me a lot of dealing with an infant. Site goes down any hour of the night, needs constant attention and tlc and doesn't give you much satisfaction for the first few months of its existence.
And I have 2 kids along with the startup, so I'd like to think I speak from experience. My personal feeling is that if you can handle raising a kid, you may be surprised at how prepared you are to handle a startup!
Re: Kids are startups
#8James Hong from "Founders at Work":
"And nothing ever goes according to plan. You can’t dwell on the fact that your plan didn’t work. In our case, we didn’t even have a plan, but it would have been worthless to have one anyway, since we just kept moving as fast as we could. You have to hustle; you can’t just have a plan and cakewalk it. You just have to know what direction you’re going in and run around like a rat in a maze trying to get out."
Had James posted a question in a forum like this seeking advice at that early, clueless stage in his company's history, you probably would have chided him for his lack of sufficient up-front planning. Yet his story is indicative of many of the other founders profiled in the book, and many other founders that I admire. The reason these founders are successful is not because they are master planners, it's because they are master improvisers, a quality shared, I believe, by good parents.
Yes, kids are like startups, but pre-birth plans will change, and they are not what will make you successful as a founder or a parent. And if you haven't had kids or started a company, then your advice in those realms doesn't carry much weight.
Re: Kids are startups
#9>> I am in my mid-forties, married, with no kids. But that does not mean that I do not know how hard it is to raise kids. You really don't know how hard it is to raise kids. And with all due respect, just so you know, kids are not startups.
Nreece's corollary to Hofstadter's law: raising kids is harder than you think even when you take into account nreece's corollary to Hofstadter's law. :-)
> Kids are not startups.
Of course they are. They aren't startup companies, they are startup humans, but they are definitely startups.
Re: Kids are startups
#10>> I am in my mid-forties, married, with no kids. But that does not mean that I do not know how hard it is to raise kids. You really don't know how hard it is to raise kids. And with all due respect, just so you know, kids are not startups.
Nreece's corollary to Hofstadter's law: raising kids is harder than you think even when you take into account nreece's corollary to Hofstadter's law. :-) > Kids are not startups. Of course they are. They aren't startup companies , they are startup humans , but they are definitely startups.
I hope you're not implying that kids have the same failure rates as startup companies. It really seems like you're trying to force the analogy here.
+1 for the corollary though :-)