
The Hidden Costs of Starting a Company - bomatson
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/the-hidden-costs-of-starting-a-company/
======
chasing
There's something off-putting about these kinds of articles. I think it's
because there's an intentional subtext that start-up founders are some kind of
rare breed of unwilling knights who have been called to noble action. "We must
suffer so the world can experience the glory that is Docstoc." It's
disingenuous. Start-up founders aren't being put-upon: They're making a
conscious choice.

Most people work harder than they want to and must make trade-offs. People
with minimum wage jobs. Doctors, lawyers -- as others have mentioned. Pretty
much everyone except the idle wealthy or unemployed.

Pretty much everyone alive thinks they work too hard and wish they could spend
more time with friends and family or working on hobbies, travelling, etc.
Human condition.

~~~
mattzito
Eeeexactly - I started to write almost exactly this and got distracted and
returned to find you'd said it better than I could.

Having a startup is certainly hard work for less pay than you might be making
elsewhere. But you get all of the benefits of being your own boss to one
degree or another, plus creating something from scratch, and the possible
upside.

I knew a guy who opened a lunch restaurant and catering business, and until it
was making enough money, he'd work 6 days a week at the restaurant for lunch
and catering gigs, and then also waited tables at a friend's restaurant and
worked as a bartender at another friend's place. He basically got 4 hours of
sleep a night, 7 days a week for three years. There was no brass ring or huge
exit at the end of that path, he'd just decided at some point that he wanted
to be his own boss.

And then there's all the people out there who work two or three part-time jobs
just to make ends meet, who never see their kids, who may not even have health
insurance - where's their work/life balance?

I personally feel privileged to have had the opportunity to start a company,
make some money, have health insurance, and yes, worked my fair share of
60-hour weeks and all-nighters. I'm _way_ better off than so many people in
the US, forget about the rest of the world.

~~~
marcosscriven
Read half the article - he lost me when he used that hackneyed phrase '110%'

~~~
6d0debc071
Fairly sure she's a woman ^^;

~~~
abherrera
You would be right. I'm definitely not a dude.

------
andy_adams
I may be living in dream land, but I've been building my product without
sacrificing my health, my family time, or my lifestyle. I've had to eat into
some savings, and I've yet to make it a self-sustaining enterprise, but the
idea that you need to sacrifice so severely for a business just seems
irresponsible and exaggerated to me.

Am I alone?

~~~
lubujackson
Founding a startup is entirely a series of time management decisions. Build
vs. buy vs. rent vs. skip. People that say you can't run a startup without
sacrificing nearly everything are the same people that say programming on a
schedule is impossible - it's only impossible if you don't FIRST focus on
managing your time in an effective manner.

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7Figures2Commas
I never understand the point of these types of posts, which unfortunately seem
way too common.

There are lots of occupations that can be demanding and stressful (doctor,
lawyer, investment banker, etc.). Why is it a surprise to anyone that a career
requiring a significant commitment of one's time leaves less time for other
activities?

There are only 24 hours in a day and if you're ultimately not happy with how
you're using them, the solution is to change how you're using them, not to
spend time complaining or lamenting what you've _chosen_ to give up.

~~~
r0s
This highlights the disconnection between motive and work. I think the motive
for most people to try the startup game is to free themselves from the
constraints of typical work environments.

Success means the freedom to use your time as you prefer, but there's no
guarantee of success. The alternative is status-quo drudgery.

------
beat
If you have no balance in your life, is it because startups are that hard, or
because you have no balance? (Yes, it's a tautology, or perhaps recursion) Is
the startup just a means of running away from other things by running toward
something else? Is it fundamentally different from, say, alcoholism, or serial
monogamy, or any other semi-consciously self-destructive behavior?

Of course, there are sacrifices to be made. But ultimately, it's about
priorities. If your startup is SO important that you're losing your health or
your marriage, then there's something wrong with how you're prioritizing. The
startup can still get MOST of your time (like any career), but without ruining
you.

~~~
bomatson
Definitely a good point - I would argue to takes time to reach this balance.
The lack of work-life balance is a common trap many first-time entrepreneurs
fall into. It honestly takes a lot of practice and discipline to get it right

------
MicahWedemeyer
_I’ve lost friends because they thought I was crazy to try to build my own
company._

Huh? What kind of friend tosses you aside because you decide to start a
company? That makes absolutely no sense. I'm trying to imagine this
conversation:

You: I'm starting my own company!

Friend: I think that's a crazy idea. You'll probably fail.

You: I'm confident I can do it.

Friend: I disagree, and we're not friends any more.

If anything, friends usually way underestimate the difficulty of running a
business and just throw platitudes at you like, "Do it! Follow your dreams!
With passion you can't fail!"

~~~
abherrera
As a woman I've had friends, male and female, give their opinions of why I
shouldn't build my company. Many of the conversations go back to the concept
of I should be doing what most women my age do... get a great 9-5 job, meet a
guy, and have a family. It's been hard and surprising to have very close
friends, many who are very pro women's rights and liberal, express these view
points. I would never tell any of these friends they were wrong to...get a
job, meet someone, get married, and have a family. So friendships ended
because of a lack of common ground.

I like the conversation you created though. It actually would have been easier
if your comments were true.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

------
carterschonwald
Not every optimization problem has a global optima, but just as importantly,
not every problem is a zero sum game with a bajillion shitty Pareto optima.

Variety is good for the brain.

Yes I'm sure you're addicted to the hedonic treadmill of your b2c webapp idea
(ok, some folks are b2b, and some folks are doing things that aren't webapp).
Recognize it, and manage it. Cognitive variety is healthy.

Ask yourself this: once you're professionally accomplished and have nothing to
prove, what will you be focusing on professionally and how will you juggle
various priorities.

Now ask yourself: why aren't you doing that already. Go do that. Unless its a
bizarre fantasy that isn't possible in reality.

:-)

------
ank286
Choosing 2 of 3 is true for early-stage startups. But once things take off,
then you can get 3 out of 3 as you are able to delegate some of the work out
to your employees. Then, you can achieve startup, health, significant
other/family.

------
a_soncodi
I disagree with the 'you must pick X of Y' absolutism. It appears to validate
an oversimplified point, as do 'Absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence' and other clever one-liners.

Choices involving time allocation don't have to be binary; each one carries an
opportunity cost, the granularity of which we control. Although I can relate
to many negatives from the article, it strikes me as equivalent to complaining
about a cushy-but-boring day job while not willing to incur the risks of self-
employment.

The meat of the issue is to decide what the right balance is, to be aware of
the trade-offs, and to not vilify 'startups' and blame them for our failure to
make choices consistent with our values.

"You know where you got that shirt!" \- Charlie Murphy

------
rokhayakebe
I think (now) you can do a startup and still keep your friends, have great
health, have fun, etc... You need to stop being reactionary and be visionary.

Firstly you have to start spending quality time, and that means cutting off
lots of the things you do at work that are only there to satisfy your need to
feel like you are accomplishing things. You aren't. Quality time is true for
family, and friend hours as well; just because you are there does not mean you
are there. Many people who saw their parents regularly still feel they were
very distant from them. If you are at home, be there mentally. If you are
working, close that email window, and work.

Secondly make more time by waking up earlier in the day. If you wake up at 6,
you can go to bed at 10:45, and that leaves you with 16 hours to do your
magic.

Thirdly, stop being reactionary. If you have a plan other than the no-plan
plan (translation "i don't know what to do so I am doing anything that comes
to mind"), then you will know you can execute on it without having to spend 16
hours on it daily. While it is entirely understandable to work extremely long
hours every now and then, it is probably more viable over the long term to
have a plan and execute on it at your own pace. The things we will change the
course of our startup (e.g. "we have to launch before July 7th") won't change
them at all, besides if your startup is one event away from failure, even if
it is Google launching a similar product, then it is safe to say it should not
be called a business.

Kick back. Write a plan. Execute it.

------
ktrgardiner
It seems as if the college idiom has graduated alongside the people going on
to found startups. In college it was "Good grades. A social life. Sleep.
Choose two because you can't have all three." Now it's the more mature but
still very similar "Startup. Significant other. Health."

------
nhebb
There's another hidden cost directly related to this article. It's call
opportunity cost. If you're interested in starting a company you are drawn to
these kinds of articles, and ultimately they just waste your time. It's
startup porn, and it takes away from time you could be working. _[Raises right
hand and swears to stay off HN the rest of the work day.]_

~~~
bomatson
You don't think a dialogue around work-life balance is relevant to
entrepreneurs & startup employees?

------
zwieback
There's another hidden cost to starting a company - smart, young, energetic
engineers are pulled away from established companies that are much more likely
to succeed.

I feel like the current balance has gone much too far into the startup
direction and I've been waiting for some time for the pendulum to swing back.

------
Asparagirl
From the article: "Jason Nazar, the founder and chief executive of Docstoc,
said: “You can have your start-up and one thing. You can have your start-up
and your health. You can have your start-up and your family. Or you can have
your start-up and your significant other, but you can’t have multiples. If you
try to have multiples, you’ll be poor at all of them.”"

Actually, a wise philosopher named Jennifer Lopez (yep, J-Lo) said that first.
Her quotation (paraphrasing here) was something to the effect of: "You can
have a great career, a great relationship with your partner, or be a great
parent. Pick any two."

------
mindcrime
Startups are hard, let's go shopping?

Meh. OK, yes, doing a startup can be a difficult process, and you probably
have to make some serious sacrifices if you want to succeed. That's not a big
revelation.

In my own case, I've basically forgone social interaction, dating, spending
time with friends, etc., in order to try and get this thing off the ground.
No, it's not pleasant, but I remind myself that this state of affairs is (if
things go well) temporary... we'll get some traction at some point, and I may
be able to back off a little. One day, we'll be a profitable, growing company,
we'll hire a CEO, and I'll designate myself "chief coffee mug washer" and step
aside to spend time doing fun stuff. Maybe some of my friends will still be
alive then, and still know who I am. And maybe I'll still be young enough to
have some kind of chance of finding a girlfriend. Or not. Who knows? But who
ever said any of this was going to be easy?

Winning isn't normal, right?[1]

[1]: <http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/winning-isnt-normal/>

~~~
6d0debc071
If you're not enjoying what you're doing, and you're sacrificing so much to do
it, then there'd better be some pretty big pay-off at the other end. Pretty
big gamble to be taking essentially on faith otherwise.

~~~
mindcrime
Aaah, but that's just it - I _do_ enjoy what I'm doing. I'll be disappointed
if there isn't a big payoff at the end, but I enjoy the process of creating,
building, learning, growing and discovery. Working on this startup has taught
me so much and taken me in so many interesting directions...

I guess you could say I'm an adherent of the mindset that "startups are the
new graduate school". I love learning new stuff and forcing myself to learn
what I need to know to do this startup is a great experience in many ways.

But like everything in life, there are always tradeoffs.

