

Ask YC: To The Young, How Supportive Are Your Parents? - rockstar9

For the younger crowded on Hacker News, how supportive are your parents to a startup? It seems most stress the importance of some work experience first. Any experiences? What problems have some of you guys faced?
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iamelgringo
I'm not young, (turned 35 today), but I have a number of war stories about
regarding parents and their being supportive.

For the first 14 years of my life, we lived as missionaries in Central
America. And, on top of that, we moved around tons. I moved 20 times before I
was 21. So, I didn't really have tons of chances to develop lasting
friendships aside from my parents, brothers and sisters like most teenagers.
The first couple of times that I went against the parental flow, it was really
rough.

So, there was an immense resistance when I wanted to get our of the family
business (being preachers) and follow my own dream of being a software
engineer. The first time my Dad found out that I had been on a BBS, I got
grounded for a week. They talked me out of majoring in CS back in 93, because
they were convinced that computers were a fad. Doh! And, they talked me into
being a nurse so I could have a steady job. And, that's what I've been doing
for money for 15 years.

I've been trying to escape nursing for 15 years. I've tried a bunch of
different ideas: painting, sculpture, architecture, furniture design,
Animation, Visual Effects... Non of which my family approved of or supported.
Finally, I decided to go back and pursue my first love--programming and
engineering. I've been chipping away at my schooling online for the past 5
years, and I'm done this semester. Meanwhile, my parents were trying to talk
me out of it the entire time.

So, I'm now embarking on my first startup idea, a suite of online tools to
make contract nurses lives easier. And, finally, after 15 years, they're a
little excited about what I'm doing. Honestly, they only started coming around
to the idea of my starting an online business since Startup School.

They finally understood that there might be something to these computer things
after all.

~~~
lacker
Happy birthday!

~~~
iamelgringo
Thanks.

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eisokant
I am 17 years old myself and am still living at home, at least for a few more
months till I move to London.

My parents have been supportive since day 1 I picked up a programming book
together with a business book; determined to create an e-commerce site for a
local retailer. To be honest I see myself more as a business oriented person
then as a hacker, but I thoroughly enjoy writing code nonetheless.

While in high school (I am now in my last 3 days) I had to travel a lot for
various business projects and all throughout my family has supported me and
never stopped me to pursue my dreams and goals. Since September '07 though, my
IB diploma has been my primary focus and I've had to put off my goals and
ideas up until this Friday. I fully agree that work experience adds tremendous
value to your chances of success because theory never quite cuts it in
reality. For anyone reading this, my age or younger I can not stress enough to
go out and get an internship at a company in the field you want to later be
in. Get experience by listening to those older then you but never shy away
from giving your input. The most important lessons I learned from real-life
experience are:

1\. Only surround yourself with people who want you to be successful. Find
those people that have integrity and character and don't bother with the rest.

2\. Never underestimate the power of networking, and make it one of your top
priorities for your business.

I am about to launch my first full blown company and will go to India for 2
months to work with a development team. It's an exciting time and my parents
are very supportive of me and have faith in me. Which provides you with a
great basis to start from because you'll run into enough people who won't.

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fallentimes
It's been sort of a weird situation not just between myself and my parents,
but between myself and my entire extended family. I come from a very
conservative (in the life style sense, not the political one) family. No one,
including Aunts, Uncles, Parents, Grandparents and cousins, has lived in a big
city let alone start their own company.

Luckily, a few years ago, I was able to land an internship in Chicago for a
few summers, which I think made my family realize I wanted something slightly
more adventurous than middle class Ohio/Michigan. After graduating, I was able
to obtain a full-time job in Washington DC, launch a successful micro business
(less than 3k revenue in FY07) and launch a successful small business (revenue
of around 85k in FY07).

For my parents and family, they've accepted that I'll be taking a very
different path than the "family norm" and even though they don't understand
exactly what I'm doing, they're happy because I'm happy. However, if I had
decided to quit my "good" job, move to Boston and launch a startup with no
experience running a previous business or living in a big city, I think they
would have been extremely hesitant in their support.

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markbao
I'm Mark Bao, 16, owner of Avecora and coder and all that, and my parents are
highly against, extremely unsupportive of coding/business/entrepreneurship.
I'm guessing that it's a result of my lack of focus towards (high) school.

My reasons for doing this kind of thing early:

1) The people. Like eisokant said, networking is extremely important and I
take it seriously.

2) The experience. I'm not getting a huge amount of business experience from
this, but it's still valuable to learn about.

3) Make some money to re-invest into future things.

All are hard to do and are important problems. Unfortunately, I've been unable
to network around here due to location (Boston = sucky networking compared to
the Bay Area) and time. And, of course, my parents are anti-supportive of it,
so it's tough to find time to work and code amidst their demands and school.

~~~
andreyf
I think it's an age/cultural thing. Same story here, but with my grandmother.
She is a professor at Moscow State U, and is very saddened that I'm not going
the respectful and institutionalized route of academia. To her,
entrepreneurship is something for selfish people.

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michael_dorfman
No longer being young myself, I can't speak from direct experience here-- but
I can say that I was called in to help in the dismantling of a disastrous
start-up founded by a young'un, and largely parent-funded. In this particular
case, at least, there was an outrageously unrealistic business plan, and the
parents were acting as blind angels-- performing none of the reality checks
that normal funding sources would apply. I think the business would have been
much more successful if the founder had gotten more constructive criticism
along the way, and less cash to burn.

So, where it is great if parents are supportive, I think there are many forms
this support can come in, and some can be counter-productive.

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maxklein
Work experience is CRITICAL! How can you start a business when you don't know
how one works? Why make mistakes when 6 months in a company will already point
out most of the mistakes? How do you expect to make your employees happy when
you do not know how it feels to be an employee? How can you manage properly if
you have never had a terrible manager?

Get a job, save the money, then quit the job and start your business. This is
a sensible and clever solution, and trying to start a business by depending on
your parents and bootstrapping and hunting for capital is frankly...stupid.

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mpc
I'm not sure if I qualify as young (25), but coming from a different
generation, they don't quite understand wanting to turn down a 100k job to
bootstrap something with a very small chance of success.

I can understand this, after all my dad was a civil engineer and worked at the
same company for 30 years. They also think of starting a startup in the terms
of starting a company in the past. For example, opening a store. I've pointed
out that it's much different now for technology and web companies.

Either way, they're always pretty excited even if they don't quite get it.

~~~
xirium
> they don't quite understand wanting to turn down a 100k job to bootstrap
> something with a very small chance of success.

Your _average_ income will exceed US$100,000. You have a small chance of
becoming a billionaire and a larger chance of getting nothing. You can repeat
this process five or 10 times before you succeed - or take a US$100,000 job.

The contention is that parents see your _likely_ income being below your true
potential.

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a-priori
First, I'm 23 (as of today) and my parents were the ones who first got me
started on computers at about age 6. Neither of them are big geeks, but my dad
is a draftsman and has used computers at his work since CAD became popular in
the early 90s.

He also tried to start his own business when I was a kid. Unfortunately it
flopped, taking a huge chunk of money with it. It took years for my parents to
recover from that, and they didn't have much money to begin with. My dad has
never attempted another business, but I think he regrets that.

That must be where I got the entrepreneurial bug from. When I suggested that I
want to start my own business, my dad was supportive but wary, and my mum was
wary but supportive, if you get what I'm saying. I can't fault either of them,
because they've always supported me in everything I've done.

Money is always a sticky point with them, so I had to convince them that I had
some idea what I was doing and that there was relatively little risk. Now is
the time I can do risky stuff like this. The worst that could happen, I
argued, is that I lose a few months of my life and living expenses for that
time.

It turned out that's what did happen, and now I'm in a sticky position of
trying to find a summer job in May, when no one wants to hire me for just 4
months (now 3.5). I'm returning to school in September to finish my undergrad.
I don't consider my first startup attempt a failure, because I've learnt a
lot.

The whole time, my parents have been supportive of the idea, but very
concerned about money. I know I impressed them with how long I could survive
on the money I had -- I definitely learnt how to live ridiculously cheap.

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ucdaz
Ok forks! This is how I convinced my parents. I told them since I don't have a
mortgage, wife, kids, and other financial burdens, this is the perfect time
for me to go off to work on my own projects. Even if I fail, I at least know I
tried and have experience for the next gig. Life is short, and it's too easy
to fall into the daily grind of working in the office. Hence, if I don't try,
it will be harder for me to follow my dreams when I'm older. This is the
Valley for heaven's sake! Where expression, art, and science can become a
reality. Voila! They were sold!

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kynikos
My parents support me as much as they can, despite limited knowledge and
understanding.

While I'm sure they'd love to see my startup succeed, they are sensible people
and are always highlighting the advantages of more stable, 9-5 type of
employment. We definitely don't see eye to eye on many things in that regard,
however they are always interested in what's going on, what we've got planned,
and are always there to celebrate the little successes. When it comes down to
it, that's all that matters.

That, and maybe some seed investment :]

------
mrtron
Work experience can be extremely valuable in starting up. I would even
recommend going through the startup process as an employee if possible to
learn some good and bad practices.

Personally my parents think I am crazy for attempting it. My father who ran
his own business for 25+ years strongly encouraged me not to do the same.
However, like him, I have the desire and he recognizes this.

Parents want the best for you, but don't necessarily know what is best for
you.

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ambition
When have parents ever been supportive of risky behaviour in their children?

I say this in defense of my non-supportive mother and somewhat-supportive
father.

~~~
ken
When they've got 3 others who are more stable! :/

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sehansen
Well, my mom has been trying to make me start a company since I was 16 and
told her I wanted that someday...

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andreyf
I'm 22, just finished school, and my parents completely lack opinion in regard
to anything I want to do. They're supportive whenever I need their help in any
way, but as long as I was finishing college, they haven't really been
interested in what exactly I'm doing professionally.

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hbien
Very supportive, but I finished college first and then transitioned from
intern to full time at work. My last day of work is in two days and then I'm
bootstrapping a business.

If I dropped out of college to start a business, I'm pretty sure my parents
would kill me.

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xenoterracide
my parent's are in their 70s. I don't think they have much faith in my ability
to pull this off, and they certainly don't understand the internet or even
computers. They support me as much as they can.

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dangoldin
I'm 24 and my parents seem to be supportive but I think a large part of that
is that we came to the US in the late 80s so they may have the entire "risk"
mindset.

