

What it's like to be the SO of a start-up founder. - redgirlsays
http://redgirlsays.com/blog/2010/12/what-its-like-to-be-the-so-of-a-start-up-founder/

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enjo
Does this really happen? I've been involved in startups for the last 9 years
(the last 4 as a technical founder). I can count on one hand the number of
times I've pulled an all-nighter or even really worked through a weekend. Sure
I work a bit more than the average person, but it's nothing like this.

I've had bugs popup on the weekend or during a vacation (and I do travel with
my laptop everywhere I go). 99% of the time they fall into the 'we can live
with that until Monday' category. My relationship with my wife and friends is
simply too important to let something as trivial as a startup get in the way
of it.

I just can't help but feel like we're continuing to romanticize this
workaholic culture. That somehow to be a 'real' entrepreneur you have to turn
your whole life over to it.

This is one place that I agree with the guys from 37 signals. You don't _have_
to kill yourself to make a business go. You don't _have_ to work 80 (or 120)
hour weeks.

Starting a business is a marathon, and like all marathons it requires pacing.
A large part of that is learning to separate the real emergencies from the
perceived ones. Just because something isn't working, it doesn't mean that
your business will fall over if it continues not to work for 48 hours. That
sort of triage is really important if your going to maintain your sanity to
get to the fourth year.

Just how I see it at least. My wife would certainly write a very different
article than this one.

~~~
haploid
Some of us actually enjoy creating and producing. It seems that you are
suggesting an irreconcilable dichotomy between work and enjoyment of life with
your phrase "turn your whole life over to it".

In point of fact, many people do this as _part_ of living, and don't count it
as work. Most children, when building novel( to them )structures with legos,
lincoln logs, blocks, etc, are not "turning their whole lives over to it".
They are living, and they are enjoying themselves.

~~~
alex_c
There's a difference between creating and putting out fires, though. I enjoy
creating, but I can also set it aside long enough to spend some time with
someone. I DON'T enjoy putting out fires, but it is usually a necessary evil
towards a more significant goal.

It's amazing to have a SO who understands and accommodates that, but the two
shouldn't be confused - it's the difference between having to fix an
emergency, and enjoying coding more than sharing a meal with your SO.

~~~
franimal61
I agree with you, I just want to point out the fact that he (the startup guy)
DID go to brunch with his SO.

I'm sure that it would have been easier for him to just stay home and work,
and go out "some other time" or something like that. I really like that it
seems like they both compromised on brunch that day. He joined her for brunch,
and she was alright with him doing work at brunch.

Seems like they have a really good relationship.

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gamble
Not sure how I feel about this anecdote - the SO is unusually accommodating,
and it may be tempting to interpret this story as inspiration not to worry
about relationships when you're working on a startup. (Or any bursty, time-
demanding job, really.)

I've done a couple of startups, and went back to school a few years ago. My
husband is a game developer. So I think it's not unreasonable to claim some
familiarity with these issues. =)

The key is communication - especially for men, who are not always inclined to
talk about relationships unless something is obviously wrong. Remember, women
initiate most divorces and most men have no idea it's coming! You need to
touch base regularly and make sure that problems aren't building up.

Engineers, think of the Rule of Tens: It's ten times harder to fix a problem
after it's become a pattern than when it's fresh, and a hundred times harder
to fix if your partner is prepared to break up over it.

Also, be sure to set aside regular times to spend together, and do everything
in your power to avoid being sucked back into work. Occasional lapses are
okay, but you can't expect to be someone's highest priority when you put them
at the bottom of your priorities.

~~~
sudont
> the SO is unusually accommodating

This is what I consider a working relationship. It’s kind of like being poly,
each partner has to accommodate the other’s external love (for work, as it
is). I’ve seen this between pairs of artists, athletes, artist+programmers and
musician+designers. It’s never people who have “just a day job” but rather
those who view their trade as a superset of their life. The accommodation for
the partner is really just understanding and accepting the need to create in
another as a legitimate part of the relationship.

Since the writer did the same to her husband, I’m assuming this isn’t a big
issue...

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callmeed
Eh, not really a fan of this post. First, when I have to handle a 911 for our
company, I cancel my plans and/or leave to fix it. I'd never hack from a
restaurant table. My wife would rather me not be there than be hiding behind a
laptop.

Plus, it shouldn't happen that often. If you're canceling plans and ignoring
your SO on a frequent basis, then _you're doing it wrong_ or you simply
shouldn't be in a relationship.

 _"One of the best ways to combat this is to get involved yourself. Teach
yourself to code ..."_

This is totally unappealing to me unless you're already dating/married to a
hacker/founder. Creating "artificial common ground" just so you can have more
time with someone reeks of trouble to me.

(FYI, founder for 8+ years, married for 6, 4 kids)

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mrkurt
I suspect that this is only half the story. The other half has him being
emotionally invested in the relationship, treating her like she's important,
and doing all the other things that people in loving, healthy relationships
do.

A well oiled relationship can accommodate disruptions and uncertainty, you
just have to do the work necessary to make it "well oiled".

If your significant other _won't_ tolerate these sort of things, then you
should probably think hard about where your relationship stands.

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araneae
Meh. This is basically what it's like to be the SO of a student, or an
academic, or a freelance blogger or writer or programmer, basically anyone who
has an unstructured work environment. Both my SO and I will go to relatively
nice restaurants with our laptops and work and ignore each other.

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Ixiaus
A similar experience occurred for me.

My GF and I went to Vegas for halloween (we both used to live there, so we
have many friends and family there) and on the day we were leaving we decided
to have a Vietnamese lunch with her parents. I got "the call" from my co-
founder that there was a bug and it was affecting many of the systems on both
customer and employee facing functionality.

So I told my GF, "I'm going to have to fix this before we begin our four hour
drive back to SD." She said, "Okay honey."

I sat there for two hours, programming furiously through lunch with her and
her parents till I had it fixed to a point where I could leave it for the next
6 hours. Thank god my Nexus One has tethering support and my girlfriend was
supportive. Her parents seemed indifferent but other patrons were looking at
us strangely as my GF sat there playing with her phone while I went apeshit on
my laptop.

Kudos to the author for being an awesome mate; and I second the advice of
becoming "involved".

------
ora600
My husband has been patient through years of on-call duty and pages at all
hours of day, night and weekends. He's been patient through all night
maintenance duties and when I'm away for conferences or customer visits few
times a year.

I've been patient when his company adapted this agile practice that means a
release until 4am every Wednesday.

One thing I'm wondering about is the "get involved" advice: I'm a pretty mean
developer, but I work in languages and environments that are very different
from what my husband is working on. Whenever I try to discuss his work
problems, I end up asking lots of wrong questions and generally annoying him.
There is very little I can do to actually help him work on problems. Thats
with me having 15 years of coding experience.

There is simply no way a girlfriend who is just learning to code can help her
startup SO work on his projects.

~~~
lowglow
I feel the last part is just untrue. If s/he can't help in a coding capacity
there are plenty of opportunities to help otherwise. It's akin to having a
role in a family.

~~~
ora600
Of course there are plenty of opportunities to help. However, telling the GF
"learn to code so you can help him with his projects" can lead to wrong
expectations.

~~~
redgirlsays
That's true, and I didn't necessarily mean that the gf could/would help code
the actual project, but having a knowledge of the logic or syntax could be
useful. Sometimes there's just a semicolon missing somewhere (etc.) and fresh
eyes are needed to spot it, and a basic understanding of coding/that
particular language could help in those situations.

------
jscore
In many parts of the world (and USA) it's considered pretty disrespectful to
take a phone call while seated at a restaurant.

Now 'furiously coding' at the restaurant (not a coffee shop) -- that I've
never seen before, and I've lived in SF for a long time.

~~~
roel_v
This is what struck me most about this article - that they seemed to think it
was OK to sit in a a restaurant with a laptop open on the table, and not even
being coy about it! It's plain disrespectful, not even so much to the people
at your table (who presumably are either ok with it or at least know the
person and could interfere), but more to the other patrons and staff. Imagine
going out for nice night in town and some moron pulls out his computer at the
table next to you and starts banging away and polluting the atmosphere with
his bright lcd screen. Luckily around here waiters are starting to stand up
for patrons and are asking people on their phones to move outside while they
talk (which is a comparable social faux pas, but happens much more).

(note that it depends on the definition of 'restaurant' - I realize that
McDonalds is called a 'restaurant' too in some parts of the world, I mean a
place with tablecloths and staff that comes to your table, so starting at
around a neighborhood pizza place or so. Also I've asked my wife to move to
the bar or the lobby several times when she got out her computer in similar
situations, I've been on all sides of the table on this one.)

------
axod
The worst thing for my wife I think, is when I'm away from the house with
little connectivity, and I need to call her up and ask her to fix something.

"Open up my macbook, now open up this document, now open a terminal, type in
./deploy.sh" etc

I'm not patient giving instructions and she's not patient being on the
receiving end of it. But she's been a life saver quite a few times now :)

~~~
jallmann
ssh on my phone has been a life saver quite a few times now, too.

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jdp23
very well said.

when i was doing a startup in the 90s, my SO was in law school and she was
working even longer hours than i was. so our conversations were often "i'm
afraid i'm going to have to work late tonight." "bummer. me too, though, so
it's probably just as well." we worked side by side a lot too, and both made
it a point to be involved in what the other was doing: i'd quiz her about
outlines to help study for tests, she gave a lot of feedback on what we were
doing as a startup ... it worked out great.

------
alexwestholm
I forwarded this to my girlfriend. Thanks for providing an SO's perspective so
that I can make the point that it's part of the game, and not just me.

~~~
T_S_
Boys, can I give you some friendly advice from a married man here? Don't send
this story to your partner. You will send the message: compare yourself to
this saintly blogger. It's a lose-lose. Best case: she simply barfs and laughs
it off. Worst case? Never mind.

Instead arrange for her to accidentally stumble upon it. Better yet, if you
can arrange to have her befriend the blogger in question without mentioning
anything...

Barring that, pay the utmost attention to her whenever you are together.

------
cmer
I realized that shit usually hits the fans when you say you literally need to
sleep with the computer instead of her. :) True story.

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KevBurnsJr
The odds of your startup succeeding are better than the odds of you finding a
girl as cool as this.

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mitchellhislop
I think that the really interesting piece of this article was how often the SO
is talking about a "we". This is the really important part of it all - if its
not a we, it does not have a very good chance.

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WillyF
I've had the same exact thing happen to me, but I'm the startup founder and my
girlfriend is a management consultant. She's been known to take her laptop out
to bars.

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clistctrl
My girlfriend would never stand for this, there are 6 days of the week I can
work whenever I need to, but when it comes to Sunday brunch its hands off.
Thats our time. It got interrupted once with a work issue, and she still
brings it up.

