
“A Doable Sacrifice:” Y Combinator as a Married Man - kclick
http://refer.ly/aYAm
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sridharvembu
I started my company (Zoho Corp) after I got married and our son was born
within a couple of years of it. One co-founder already had a kid by the time
we got started. It helped that none of us were into "youth culture" but more
of a "geek culture" - even at 23, we were far more interested in seeking out
people to discuss The Economist than to go to a bar ... I am not ashamed to
admit it!

My point is you can have a reasonably normal family life and you can build a
company. These are not mutually exclusive. Some of the insane stuff people say
they have had to do (30 hours of nonstop coding and so on) ... I am not sure
all of that is _required_ for success. Hard work, yes, many sacrifices, yes,
but we can get a lot done in a 50 hour focused work-week, and we don't have to
sacrifice all normal human relationships (parents, spouses, kids,
friendships...) to build a company. What would be the point of that?

Yes, of course, if I had set a goal that we had to exit in 4 years it would
have been a different story.

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mej10
Would you have been able to start it _as_ your son was born? I am just curious
as to how important you think the overall timeline was.

Also, I think it is an interesting idea to contrast "youth culture" and "geek
culture".

My current goals are just to be as effective a person as possible, work on my
entrepreneurial skills, and just hope that when I do have children that I am a
good enough entrepreneur to both pay the bills and be able to spend quality
time with my family. It worries me that I may not be to that point when the
time eventually arrives.

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sridharvembu
I haven't done it (i.e start the company _as_ the kid was born) so I can't be
sure but he was born during the most hectic phase of the company,
bootstrapping our way up, with lots of travel. Even during that time, I still
had plenty of time to enjoy watching him grow up.

The best lesson for me was watching my co-founder Tony Thomas, who could
maintain his Buddha-like calm in the face of trying circumstances. He was the
one who taught me it is possible to keep that balance.

Of course, I haven't watched any television in years (for the longest time, I
didn't even own a TV set) and I cannot name any recent music band but thanks
to the Economist-habit, I can quote the per-capita GDP of most countries
within 10-20%

So you have to make judicious choices, but it is possible to achieve that
balance between family life and entrepreneurship.

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mej10
Thanks for that.

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jseims
Being married is one thing; having kids is another.

As an entrepreneur with two young children, I know it's hard to keep a
balance.

The hard part isn't necessarily the limited number of hours. It's possible to
build a successful startup while working 40 hours a week, provided you're
really focused and not goofing around during those hours.

What's hard is many startups have a youth culture that glorifies in working
all the time, though much of that time is drinking beer and playing foosball.
That's great when you're 23. But I (and many others with kids) would much
prefer a professional culture of focused, intense work from 10 AM to 6 PM.

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eranation
Exactly, Here is a theory, I think one of the reason for a lack of enterprise
2.0 startups is that people like you and me (I have 2 kids as well) can't do
things like YC, and most enterprise startup ideas come from people working in
enterprises for years, and suffering the daily grind of old, overpriced
enterprise software.

Since many top talent are usually less inclined to work for gray boring
enterprises, and prefer startups (Who wouldn't?), then they don't face the
problems we "older" developers see every day. no problem to solve, less ideas,
less enterprise targeted startups.

I think PG wrote about it somewhere regarding things he looks to fund.
(<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>)

Solution? I have no clue... but a VC backed babysitter 2.0 startup might be a
step in the right direction

Edit: "do things like YC" should read - "create and run startups", not YC in
specific.

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mirsadm
I'm not sure why there is such a focus on "going through" YC. In my opinion
that isn't the difficult part at all (well getting accepted is ;)). Most
people can sacrifice 3 months of their life and not see their loved ones. It
is really only 3 months of your life. The bigger picture is a lot harder to
balance. What happens after those 3 months? How do you run the startup while
still maintaining a reasonable work-life balance?

If you can figure that part out then nothing should stop you from applying for
YC.

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rayiner
> Most people can sacrifice 3 months of their life and not see their loved
> ones. It is really only 3 months of your life.

Most people with kids live on the edge of a precarious childcare cliff. It's a
marvel of logistics to allow both parents to keep their jobs as it is--3
months of one parent holing up would push the whole family over the edge of
that cliff. What is your spouse going to do, take 3 months off work?

~~~
mirsadm
I didn't mean to make it sound easy. But running a business is difficult and
that is only one problem to overcome. If you can't solve that problem for a
pretty short amount of time then maybe it is not the right time to create the
business.

After YC it is not like you can go home and do nothing. If anything things
would get much more difficult. Especially if you raise money from investors.

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mattmaroon
My startup, in hindsight, was one of the biggest factors contributing to my
divorce. I don't blame anything other than my own choices/mistakes (and
certainly not YC). I don't think it's impossible to do both happily, in fact I
probably would have pulled it off had I been married to a different person.

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yumraj
Family conditions matter, but what also matters is the personal motivation.

I've just turned 40 and have one kid and another on the way. I guess I'm
having a mid-life crisis when it comes to my work life and have decided to try
to do something on my own.

Yes, with a pregnant wife and a young kid, it is difficult, but personal
motivation and focus has so far kept me going, at least as far as developing
the MVP is concerned. But, on the other hand, I did think about a revenue
model before starting my project and not as an after thought.

I wish I had had this itch 10-15 years ago, but I cannot change the past, only
influence my future.

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mikesickler
I'm in a similar situation. I have a bootstrapped startup that I've developed
during nights and weekends over the past two years. With a day job and young
child at home, it has been a lot of work and added stress, but it's definitely
doable, if you're driven and consistent. It's mentally exhausting, though. If
there's a limit on my productivity, it's lack of mental energy, not time.

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dbaupp
Direct link: [http://refer.ly/blog/a-doable-sacrifice-y-combinator-as-a-
ma...](http://refer.ly/blog/a-doable-sacrifice-y-combinator-as-a-married-man/)

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tagx
Doable looks weird as a word. I read it as double. I believe it might look
better hyphenated like do-able

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humbledrone
"Doable," without the hyphen, is the correct spelling and has been for a very
long time: <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/doable> .

