
Living a double life: being a parent at an early stage startup - joelg87
http://alyssaaldersley.com/living-a-double-life-being-a-parent-at-an-early-stage-startup/
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tbatchelli
Bootstrapping 2 kids and a startup for the last 3 1/2yrs. Definitely two jobs.

This is what made a difference for me between chaos and depressive thoughts to
happiness and success: Alway Be Present.

When you spend time with the kids, be present and have a good time. That means
no checking email, no thinking about the future, no thinking about the past.
Be with them, as they know and feel when you're physically present but not
mentally. This is good for everyone; spending no-guilt time with your kids
will reenergize you and make you a better (smarter even!) person.

When you are working, be present too. If you are pretending to work but
thinking you should be with your kids, drop everything and go play with them.
What will make your life miserable is trying to work while feeling guilty for
being a bad parent. You won't get anything useful done, and you won't be a
good parent either.

Also, when you hang out with the kids, make it also a fun time for yourself.
Get out of the house, do fun stuff, be a kid with them. You'll be killing two
birds with one stone.

VCs reading here might not like this: companies are disposable and kids will
be with you for all your life. Chose wisely where you want to make the bulk of
your mistakes.

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luke_s
Another 30yo with 2 kids reporting in - Unfortunately I don't think that there
are any easy answers. Sure you can tweak your schedule (work on the train!)
and there are always a few things you can cut (Turn off the TV!). However
increasingly I'm accept two things:

1 - Whatever is happening, just go with it. Sometimes the kids are going to be
sick, or its a great day for playing, or your in a super productive space with
your business. I've found that I really just need to allow myself permission
to do what needs doing at the moment, without feeling guilty about what I had
planned to be doing.

2 - All those super important things you HAVE to finish. It probably won't
matter if they don't get done. E-mails left un-answered. Dishes left in the
sink. After a few years of this, I'm starting to realise that the world
doesn't actually come to a screaming halt. I think the true trick is realising
what is really important and what you can leave out for later.

It's funny but I think having kids has taught me these two things, which
should apply very well to the startup world. It's kind of ironic that the
'stereotypical' startup founder is young, without kids. There are a lot of
lessons to be learnt from children, and I think the maturity that has come
with having kids has been a great help for me.

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callmevlad
I'm a (29yo) dad to 2 young girls, working 12-16 hour days on my own startup
for the past few months, and I'd say I struggle with some of the same issues
as the author. Staying a part of my kids' lives is still critically important,
but it's insanely hard to balance the two, even with my wife being at home
full-time.

Even though they are not old enough to realize it yet, my kids were the ones
who inspired me to start something, and they are still my biggest inspiration.
When they're older, I want them to look back and be proud of the (albeit tiny)
dent that their dad made in the universe.

I really do hope that the concentrated effort now will lead to much more
shared time and adventures down the road.

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mmx
Oh man, where do I start. I had my first kid when I was 21, to say it was
unplanned is an understatement, but marriage soon followed and things have
really worked out the last 6 years luckily. I now have 2 kids and I'm 27, I'm
also a single income for my family. I've been working on my Bootstrapped
Startup with four others guys for two years, while it does get painful
sometimes what I end up doing the most to handle everything is put off sleep.
I probably get 4-6 hours during the week and try to make up for it by getting
8-10 on the weekends, but that rarely works with children (It's hard to be mad
when two little kids jump on your head to wake you up because they want to
play). We have big updates coming in the future that will hopefully take the
site into the limelight, but until then it's a daily struggle and I love it.

~~~
jedberg
> try to make up for it by getting 8-10 on the weekends, but that rarely works
> with children (It's hard to be mad when two little kids jump on your head to
> wake you up because they want to play).

Are my parents the only ones that locked their door at night? My brother and I
couldn't wake them in the morning, because we couldn't get in. We learned at a
very early age to entertain ourselves until Mom and Dad got up.

I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, I'm just saying that it seems like
no one thinks of this solution. :)

I see this complaint quite often about the kids being bothersome in the
morning and when I tell people about the "door lock" it seems to blow their
mind.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Not locking the door but had the discussion with the kids.

Also if you read your kids stories (and I highly recommend it) and you include
a generous helping of stories about kids who are independent and loving it
(Little Britches, the Boxcar Kids, etc) they too will look forward to being
independent. All three of my kids got a checking account when they were 5
(USAA is great for this), they were doing their own laundry by the time they
were 10 and making their own lunches. By the time they reached 13 we started a
program where each night one person was responsible for dinner that night for
all five of us, didn't matter what it was, just had to be reasonably
nutritious. Spaghetti? Pretty easy. Mac-n-Cheese, whitesauce with cheeses and
some boiled noodles. Croque Madam? Ham sandwhiches with an egg. Steamed
vegetables? straight forward. Etc. The goal of my wife and I was that our kids
when they hit 18 needed to be able to manage a checkbook, cook their own meals
economically, and manage their own laundry/hygiene. When they went off to
college that was going to be expected after all.

The benefit to the parents is of course that the kids require less "time
critical" time (its really handy to be able to say, "I'm going to be late,
you're on your own for dinner." and to know that they will be able to make
themselves a nice dinner.) And to not worry about whether or not they have a
healthy lunch for school or clean clothes to wear.

By the time they are 18 they pretty self sufficient and that is a huge win.
The trick is realizing that kids are much more capable than we often give them
credit for, and they feel better about themselves when they feel they are in
control of their own lives.

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CoolGuySteve
See a lot of parents posting here about their success in raising children
while working at a startup.

But I have a question that will sound condescending no matter how I phrase it:
How many of you are developers vs product managers, business people, designers
etc?

The reason I ask is because development is _hard_. It takes time to figure
things out, and it's difficult to half-ass your way out of something when the
clock hits 6pm without it coming back to get you the next morning.

~~~
jw_
Development is not that hard, really.

~~~
pyre
Depends on what you're doing. Saying "development is *" is way too broad. It's
like saying "construction is easy," because you left off the qualifier, "I
build sub-divisions for a living." Obviously building cookie-cutter houses in
sub-divisions for a living is different than building suspension bridges or
skyscrapers.

~~~
jw_
Fair enough - work that falls under the umbrella term "development" does have
a wide range of technical difficulty.

What I was objecting to was the implication that the GP made that people with
kids must be one of those "businessy hangers-on" because development itself is
too difficult to balance with family. The vast majority of development is not
that demanding - most developers are not building the equivalent of suspension
bridges, and even if they are, it's not impossible to leave at 6pm most of the
time unless something critical is down.

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timc3
As a parent whose startup and child are the same age, it's difficult.

But that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

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sfall
this is not a comment on being a parent, working on a start up, or the
difficulty of either or both. It is about how poor word choice was used to
make an enticing title, hearing 'living a double life' i think that most
people see that as two separate or two lives secret from one another. Is this
just me? I googled it and as I skimmed the top stories it was all about secret
lives.

