
Ask HN: cofounders as couples ? - thibaut_barrere
Just curious (really) - are there cofounders on HN that are also in couple ?<p>Note that I'm not looking for pros and cons on the situation, more wondering if our situation is very common or not :)
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noonespecial
If you're in a startup and happen to be married, your spouse _is_ a cofounder
whether you like it or not. So are the spouses of all the founders.

This applies both from a legal perspective and an emotional one. Plan for it.
Write it in to the original agreement. Don't wait for divorce or (worst case)
death to find out how much trouble this can cause.

I have to say though, having my wife actually involved, for us, makes
everything better. Its much easier to bear the risks and make tough decisions
with each other's support. Your mileage may vary.

~~~
webwright
Disagree. Your wife is an investor and there are legal and emotional issues to
consider, but they otherwise aren't remotely like a co-founder.

~~~
tptacek
That depends on how you choose to manage your company, your work/life balance,
and your family system. Erin isn't a pro-forma "cofounder" of my company, but
the more involved we've had her get, the smoother things have functioned for
us.

Your mileage will clearly vary.

I've worked with founders whose spouses were completely disconnected from the
company. They managed the "home front", took care of the kids, made sure the
bills got paid.

I've also worked with founders whose spouses were part of the fabric of the
company.

It just totally depends, Tony.

~~~
webwright
Oh, THAT I agree with. I know two husband-wife teams who are badass... And a
few more where the wife participates in varying ways but has a day job.

I was taking issue with the "your wife IS your co-founder, whether you like it
or not".

My wife has a job and has had no involvement with RescueTime other than a bit
o' moral support. If that makes her a co-founder "whether I like it or not",
then I have a bunch of good friends and a few family members who fit the bill,
too. :-)

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goodgoblin
My wife and I cofounded our company. She is very good at product development
and relationship building and I handle the technical side.

Plus since we have a near psychic connection our meetings are very short.

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hikari17
My wife and I have been co-founders of our nights/weekends startup from day
one. She runs customer support (phone and e-mail) and is the prototype
"seller" in our online marketplace. I handle product development, marketing,
finances and some front-end design.

We spend most evenings laptop-to-laptop in "Genlighten World Headquarters"
(our daughter's old bedroom.) Last night we worked the booth together at a
startup demo event. It was tremendous fun and particularly exhilirating to be
doing it as a couple.

Our CTO lives in another part of the US, and so far (~2 years) we haven't
experienced any obvious problems with the couple + third founder arrangement.

Bottom line: it works for us.

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idlewords
Sometimes, late at night, maybe you're pair programming with your co-founder
and your hands accidentally touch. And before you know it you're in a full-on
agile scrum, burning down the back log, one of you the chicken, one of you the
pig.

It happens. It's extreme.

~~~
tptacek
Ew.

~~~
idlewords
You never wondered why most people selected for YC are twentysomething men?

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tptacek
Erin isn't my cofounder, but she works for us full-time (both of us in
technical roles). It works.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
Thanks for sharing - are you just the two of you or are there more people
working with you as founders ?

~~~
tptacek
The company's 5 years old; we have a lot of people. I have two cofounders
(Dave & Jeremy), both in NYC (we're in Chicago). When we started, Erin had a
different job outside Matasano.

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iskander
My parents started a company together. My mom had more drive and interest in
managing, so as they grew she became CEO while my dad continued to tinker with
IT. They've been working together for ~16 years, their company is doing OK,
but my dad hasn't seemed happy about the situation in a long time.

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luckydude
I run a company that makes money.

My wife works for me and I work for her and it works great.

She is on my board so she is part of the team that can fire me.

She does the books (accounting) for the company so she works for me.

She's a very smart person and I value her opinion and every time she says that
we should get someone else to do the books I say no because then she'd be less
connected to the company and her board value would go down.

I do not think this will work for everyone. I suspect it works for us because
we are a team in our marriage and we know it and own it. I pity the fool that
messes with us, we're a team.

BTW, I agree with the comments that said that if you are in a startup your
spouse is there too. When we got going I always got the permission of the
spouse to hire the person. It's the right thing to do in many ways.

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icey
My wife helps me get perspective on lots of problems. She's not technical so
it's good for me to solicit her views.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
That's something that I find truely useful too. Cécile is less technical than
me too, but she's very helpful on this.

When you're stuck, going back to the "why" and finding another way is very
precious IMO.

~~~
megamark16
I'm running a single founder startup and my wife is definitely filling in as a
cofounder when it comes to helping me stay focused, talking me through
problems, and basically just keeping me motivated. Every time I start getting
distracted she brings me back around.

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aditya
Ivan and Abby Kirigin of the (now defunct) TipJoy seemed to do pretty well.

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ivankirigin
Have a life outside of the startup. You really shouldn't talk business 24x7.

Some investors are assholes about women. Some investors have scar tissue from
other couples. That is largely an incorrect view - when founders that are just
friends break up a company, there is no reason to hate friends who are
founders.

My rubric for picking a wife was more rigorous than picking a cofounder could
possibly be. I have no idea how people find cofounders beyond long-term
friends.

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garply
My longtime gf and I co-own our business. I run the technical side, she runs
the business side. It works well, but you definitely need a strong
relationship for it to work.

Also, since I do business in China and I'm a white foreigner, her presence as
a native mainlander is absolutely essential. I have yet to meet a successful
foreign entrepreneur here who does not have a native romantic+business partner
helping him/her.

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nkohari
My wife and I are co-founders of our company. She handles the non-technical
side, and I handle the technical side.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
Just curious: are you sometimes trying to share the know-how (ie: her getting
more technical a bit, and the other way round) ?

I'm asking because we're doing that a bit. The idea here is not to ensure she
would be able to implement difficult features, but maybe deploy a simple ruby
site on her own, or hack more css/html so that we're a bit more
interchangeable.

What's your opinion on that ?

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dariusmonsef
Collis & Cyan from Envato are an awesome and successful married founder team.

An interview with them is here:
[http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/news/birthday-interview-
wit...](http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/news/birthday-interview-with-envato-
founders-collis-and-cyan/)

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vessenes
When one of my businesses took a major nosedive in 2003, my wife worked for
me, she did the bookkeeping while I tried to keep the business alive
(successfully, in the end). We fought a lot, but I have always appreciated
that time -- I think it was a big help to our relationship for her to
understand some of the ins and outs of business life.

We also have 'overshared' about business; for a few years of my life in a
previous startup, she put in 3+ hours a day talking / planning / processing
with me. That was not a good plan for us; my (unsolicited) advice: have some
outside-of-work hobbies with your co-founding spouse so that end-of-job for
one of you does not equal end of relationship.

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yummyfajitas
My favorite restaurant (Rachel, in Jersey City) was just such a situation. The
hostess/owner and the cook were dating. They broke up.

I miss their shakshuka, french toast, the brie and avocado sandwiches. Anyone
know where to get good (and spicy) Shakshuka in NYC?

~~~
warfangle
The Hummus Place (several locations throughout Manhattan) has great
Shakshouka. They also have amazing hummus. Explains their name, I suppose ;)

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mseebach
What's your own take? Good/bad idea?

~~~
thibaut_barrere
I think it's a very good idea in our specific case :)

Pros: \- we're used to talking together a lot, including on topics that
usually matter a lot for a startup: money-management, how to grow something in
a sustainable fashion, bootstrapping, risk, handling conflict, trade-offs,
brainstorming, ... \- we're both in 'we want more time to accomplish things in
trade of less money for everyday' mode \- we've worked together already on
difficult projects and it worked out really well \- we're complementary on
some topics and unique on others (I'm more technical / product owner, she's
more business + brick and mortar) \- validating an idea takes much less effort
in this mode for us, apparently

Cons: \- split work/home life properly takes hard work :) We've been doing
plenty of personal development over the years \- you have to ensure each one
stays independent (money-wise) in case something bad happens between us (never
know)

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jacquesm
It can work well or it can be that one day you wake up next to your business
partner instead of your wife.

The chances of that happening are larger as you get more successful.

I've tried this in one of my '9 lives', I will not try it again.

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fun2have
Our startup Webnographer is run by my partner and me. It works well. We have
had the funny situation of having separate hotel rooms booked, as a client did
not know that we where together.

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robfitz
I've run into several happy founding couples (not married, just dating). They
rarely publicize it, so at first glance it seems to be less common than it
actually is.

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kungfooey
I'm pretty sure Ravelry was founded by a couple.

~~~
mikeryan
On the other anecdotal side Bebo was founded by a husband wife team as well.
They seem to be successful on both sides

Other side of that anecdote. Flickr was started by Caterina Fake and Stewart
Butterfield who are now divorced.

~~~
mikeryan
oh but back on the good side. Six Apart is a husband wife team

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rglovejoy
Cisco Systems was started by a married couple, Sandy Lerner and Len Bosack.

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sabat
The founders of SixApart (TypePad, Vox, etc.) are married. She originally did
the design, he wrote the code. They're still married.

