

Happy Family, Successful Start-up. Impossible? - mirceagoia
http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/your-family-will-pay-for-your-start-up-dreams.html

======
jeffio
It is definitely possible and I do this on a daily basis. I work from home,
have 2 kids and have founded two startups. It's not without its challenges
that's for sure...

Here is a post I wrote for parents in the same situation as me:
<http://maplebutter.com/superhero-tricks-for-startup-parents/>

And here is another post I did last week summarizing 20 great articles on this
topic: [http://jeff.io/posts/20-inspirational-articles-for-
startup-p...](http://jeff.io/posts/20-inspirational-articles-for-startup-
parents)

I am always keen to read comments when these kinds of posts hit HN. We are not
alone STARTUP PARENTS!!! :)

~~~
toast76
Like anything, it is what you make of it.

I quit my desk job 4.5 years ago. Worked at home up until last month. In that
time I've had two kids (eldest now 3) and every day of their lives so far
they've had both parents at home with them. I work weird hours, sometimes
starting early, some times finishing late....all just depends on what needs
doing. The 3 hrs I'd ordinarily spend commuting, I spend with my kids.

Now things are a little different. We have a startup with actual employees and
that means office time. It's much harder now, but it's really just the commute
and the time away that is difficult.

Like any job, it's up to you to balance your life how you see fit. Being your
own boss at the very least gives you flexibility you'll never see in a desk
job. So I think startups are perfect for work/life balance.

------
onlawschool
Dennis Chookaszian, former CEO of CNA Insurance Companies, recently told me
"Pick Two: Work, Family, Personal. I have never known anyone to be successful
at all three." This message resonated with me.

Chookaszian has chosen work and family. By all accounts, he has been very
successful professionally and the stories he recounts about his family,
casually woven into almost every conversation I've had with him, I am lead to
believe that he has also managed to maintain great relationships with his wife
and children.

In order to pursue successful and meaningful work and family lives, he had to
give up his personal interests. As a young man he loved working on cars. He
got a great deal of enjoyment out of fixing up old Porshes. About 30 years ago
he purchased a Porshe that needed an engine rebuild. He took the engine out of
the car and began working on it. Meanwhile, he got married and had children.
Where is that engine today? It sits, neglected, in the same place and
condition that he left it in 30 years ago. "I now know that engine will still
be sitting there long after I am gone," he quipped.

In that same conversation, he also made another keen observation: "When
someone says that they want 'work/life balance,' what they really mean is that
they don't want to be in an executive position." For CEOs of successful
companies, there isn't such thing as work/life balance. If you want that
balance, you can be successful in middle management, but only those who are
truly passionate and dedicated to their work make successful CEOs.

To illustrate the point, he mentioned a recent email he received from the CEO
of a company. Chookaszian is a director on the board of the firm, and the
company was dealing with a crisis. The CEO wanted to let him know that he
would be out of town for about a week on vacation. The notion that someone
would follow through with vacation plans in the midst of a company crisis was,
in his view, absurd. "As a director, when I heard news of the company crisis,
I cut short my ski trip with my wife and flew home on the next flight in order
to deal with the issue." If the CEO felt that his vacation plans superseded
his obligations as a CEO, it wasn't likely that he would have a job to come
back to after his trip.

This doesn't mean that you can't have a solid relationship with your family.
However, success in business requires that you first fulfill your obligation
to the company and its constituents. That duty will require sacrifice. It will
require long hours at the office, vacations cut short, and kids' soccer games
missed. When there is a critical decision to be made at the company, that must
come first. The additional difficulty in the start-up context is that, in a
company's infancy, critical decisions are being made almost constantly.

However, it also doesn't mean that you can't maintain happy relationships with
your family members, but something has got to give. Namely, personal interests
must be sacrificed.

Work, family, personal. Pick Two.

------
petercooper
_But do you have to be willing to give up a real bond with your kids to be an
entrepreneur?_

I don't think so. I work about 60 hours a week and despite that I spend about
3 hours per _work_ day with my daughter (more than most of my salaried friends
can pull off) and 2 full days a week "off" with her too (although I then often
work after she's gone to sleep).

I think the real danger is lengthy commuting or needing to be away from home a
lot. Not every business requires this, but for those that do, it's those
multiple nights aways and lost meals, bathtimes and bedtimes that could eat
away at the bond. Pick your battles wisely, though, and you can keep it up.

~~~
mirceagoia
If the startup is on the Internet that should help a bit (working from home
sometimes). But I don't know exactly, I don't have kids yet.

~~~
petercooper
I rarely work from home now (beyond e-mails on the Air) since I found it
inefficient and like to split family/work, but.. my office is a 5 minute drive
away so that sure helps :-)

------
gruseom
"He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are
impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief." — Francis
Bacon

[http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/preamble/hostages-to-
fortune...](http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/preamble/hostages-to-fortune.php)

~~~
tptacek
Got me in soooo much trouble. "But Erin, he was the inventor of bacon!"

------
redguava
Surprisingly enough... there is no set rule here. Some people have trouble
doing both, others manage both just fine. I would guess there is a correlation
between those that really want to achieve both and those that do. Are we going
to assume because a few successful people don't have a typical family life
that this is because they are successful... and not because they didn't want a
typical family life? That seems like a more obvious explanation to me.

So often we look for simple rules as an explanation, but typically outcomes
are a result of many smaller factors. It's like the recent discussion here
about VC causing more startups to fail vs. succeed. Maybe we can realise that
VC isn't the deciding factor, in fact there is likely no single deciding
factor, just a bunch of things that impact the outcome.

~~~
davros
I agree there's no one solution for every situation. But it is also important
for people to realize that it is _possible_ to balance family and start-up
needs.

Startups can provide flexibility, especially in working times and
telecommuting options that larger businesses usually cannot. That flexibility
can enable you to spend the right time with your family and still meet the
demands of a startup (which you shouldn't underestimate).

~~~
redguava
I agree it's possible to balance, I do so myself. I do however suspect that
the benefits of startups you mention are more for employees of startups than
the founders.

------
shawnc
this is barely an article IMO. Not much is discussed, not much is given
thought - it simply rehashes some quotes found elsewhere online and leaves it
at that.

I'm interested in the conversation that could happen here, but I feel the
article itself is weak.

As for Ambitious Entrepreneurship and having a family - I guess it's possible
to those that decide it is, and is not possible to those that decide it isn't.
I for one have a daughter and another one due in a month - and i make time for
both my ambitions and my family. It's obviously not easy - but really what has
been worth pursuing that has been easy in life?

------
verelo
My business partner (who i feel is slightly crazy for what im about to tell
you...) has 4 children and a pregnant wife. Somehow he manages to do it, and
from what i can tell, they're pretty happy.

I think it just takes a very special kind of person, but in general...its not
out of reach for the /normal/ entrepreneur. It is however very hard, but what
in life isnt?

You get in what you get out of everything in this world, so i think it just
comes down to being able to balance your life. Maybe one day i'll be brave
enough to have children, but that wont be until i feel like im smart enough to
understand how to balance the responsibilities.

------
alexknowshtml
I might be alone in this, but I'm getting a little tired of this particular
author's linkbait articles. I noticed them on GigaOm first (mostly in her
writing about coworking) and now this.

------
mkramlich
potentially harder? of course. impossible? of course not.

~~~
mirceagoia
Sheryl Sandberg shows it is not impossible. Marcus Pincus, the same. And
probably there are more...but yes, it is hard and takes a lot of understanding
from both.

~~~
whatusername
Here's another take on Sheryl: [http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2012/02/07/what-
facebooks-ipo-...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2012/02/07/what-facebooks-
ipo-means-for-women/)

------
frasertimo
I feel the article was far too one-sided and didn't really do much to start a
quality debate around this issue.

Let's look at this from a hacker perspective. Does an instance exist? Yes. Is
this instance replicable? Ah, now we have a question.

------
jstntherhckr
_I think that it hard, but a man has to decide what is it that he wants._

------
cheez
Your relationship with your kids will be fine. It's your wife you really gotta
worry about.

~~~
AznHisoka
I think being away from your wife once in awhile is actually a good thing. If
you're with her all the time, you get cabin fever, and you become
irritated/bored with her. You need some time alone to rebuild the passion.

~~~
cheez
Yep, completely correct.

------
danbmil99
Only at the same time

