
How I'm Bootstrapping a Startup While Raising Three Kids - jayro
http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/bootstrapping-with-kids
======
edw519
Very inspiring, OP. The little tips and tricks are always helpful, but what is
best is getting us to think, "If he can do it, then so can I."

One giant question, though. You describe a life where you often squeeze in a
few hours on your start-up here and there. This sounds like it would work
rather well for repetitive tasks like stuffing envelopes, folding apparel, or
answering emails. But what happens if you have trouble getting "into the zone"
for writing software during your short window of opportunity.

I have found this to be my difficulty developing leading edge software.
Finding time isn't always the biggest problem; getting creative is. It's tough
to get creative. It's tougher to get creative when you have to right now and
you only have 2 hours to work on it.

How do you handle that?

~~~
abstractbill
I used to think I needed long uninterrupted stretches of time to do good work.
It turns out I was wrong. I'm working on a side-project now, putting in less
than half an hour a day (but making sure to do it _every_ day). Strangely
enough I'm making better progress in many ways than when I had the luxury of
spending many hours on side-projects.

I'm blogging on my progress, if anyone is interested: <http://prehacked.com>
(read <http://prehacked.com/pages/about-this-blog-53> to get an idea of what
I'm working on).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>I'm working on a side-project now, putting in less than half an hour a day

Is that including thinking time? Do you have commuting time or some other time
without responsibility for other people in which to think?

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anonymous236
A friend of mine started VC-backed company when his 3 kids were 2-4 years of
age. That was several years ago and since then the company has grown to 400+
employees, millions of paying customers and went public with the market cap of
over 500 mil. Call it an "old-school" start-up if you will.

His HowTo is nannie _s_. That freed up lots of time without making him feel
like he was neglecting or taking away from his children.

YMMV however, because many people simply do not accept the very idea of
letting strangers care for children of a very young age (them being the
formative years of the personality and for other reasons).

~~~
mcknz
What's a little weird/bizarre is when kids cry upon seeing their parents,
because it means they have to leave their nanny.

------
flacon
I am currently bootstrapping a startup (<http://www.wellhubstudios.com>) while
working at another startup and have a 1 year old with another child on the
way. Couple tips that I picked up along the way:

1\. Patience. Building a company is a time-intensive process that can be
frustrating when family is demanding a lot of your time. Just focus on the
goal and slowly pick away at your giant todo list for launch.

2\. Its Good enough. Sometimes it seems like things are not moving forward or
moving forward at a glacial pace. At these times I try to switch gears and say
to myself "whats here is good enough for V1".

3\. Time Management. I work 8-5 at my job. Come home and hang out with the
family from 5-10. Then work on my startup from 10-1 pretty much every night.
This takes both discipline and the ability to handle being a bit sleepy.

~~~
yezooz
Reading this feels like dejavu beside I'm responsible for 3 little kids (1,
2.5, 4). Having three of them instead of one is a bit more demanding, but not
that different. My day looks very similar.

I'm bootstrapping a game (<http://www.car-battle.com>), it made $0 so far
which doesn't make it easier, but working in such environment you have to be
super-persistent to make it work. This is what I do.

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dstorrs
What interested me in this was the mixture of the traditional and the modern:

\- Traditional: You are the breadwinner, your wife has the primary housecare /
childcare duties.

\- Modern: You do your breadwinning from home and are self-employed instead of
working for a company.

\- Traditional: You and your wife recognize the importance of passive income.

\- Modern: You both recognize that investments are no longer a reliable way to
make passive income. Instead, you are working on a company / product / service
(AppIgnite) that will create new wealth. [1]

[1] I'm not saying that the passive income is the ONLY reason you're doing
this, or even the primary reason. But I'm sure an awareness of market changes
factored in somewhere.

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ahi
>Obviously, if you do the math $500 per day isn't a huge income for a family
of three living in a relatively expensive area like Pasadena, CA

Just a little perspective, median income for a family of 5 in California is
$66,106, so $500/day may not be huge but it's certainly large.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
We're a family of 4 living on the equivalent of $50 a day, 60% of our income
gets paid out on mortgage costs. We're not in Pasadena though.

Median income adjusted for purchasing power (based on Wikipedia figures) would
be about half your quoted amount , $34000.

I can't quite imagine having equivalent of $250 a day. You must have a lot of
savings.

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luckystrike
Wow.

I would be happy if I could do even half the things simultaneously, that you
have listed out in your post. (Quality time with wife + 3 Kids, Bootstrapped
Startup, 3-4 Consulting Projects, Being to the gym 5-6 times a week, 2
podcasts per week, ...)

If we rewind a bit to when you were just starting out after college, were you
pretty efficient and disciplined then as well? I am just curious whether self-
discipline and efficiency can also be cultivated and improved upon
_drastically_ , later in life as well.

Thanks for writing this post. It inspired me to utilize my time more
efficiently.

~~~
nbauman
I was horribly inefficient when just getting out of college (I'm 26, 4 years
out). I largely owe my improvement of work-life balance/awareness to my
better-half; I think I'd still be struggling with it if I were single.

This is a generalization, but from what I can see, the same thing happens in
grad-school students as in startups. People that are coming directly out of
undergrad have less of a sense of work-life balance and how important and
helpful it can be to your productivity and happiness.

------
jasonmcalacanis
this is a great post that adds a lot of great tips to the discussion for
parents. it really moves the discussion forward. Thanks for writing it.

I agree that commutes, meetings and starbucks runs are out of the question for
folks with limited time to dedicate to their startup.

I see people doing two 20 minute Starbucks runs a day and I'm like how can
they waste 40 minutes a day/200 minutes a week/$50 a week on Starbucks....
then i realize they don't have to get home by 7:30 to put their kids to bed
and wake up at 6am to feed them breakfast.

I'm uber efficient these days.... even my email list was designed to make my
life more efficient.

I don't need to go to networking events, read blogs, recruit developers, do
PR, do SEO or do any kind of social media or marketing.

I simply pull my thoughts together in 30-60 minutes and hit the send button.
20k+ folks get it in their email box, 250k get it on the web as folks discuss
it and forward it around and 1,000+ responses wind up in my inbox.

Many of the responses I get are from entrepreneurs who want:

a) me to angel invest (so i get deal flow!) b) developers from outside of the
major cities who want to break in to the internet industry ("well hello!
please meet my Director of Technology who will fly you in for a
recruiting/cult meeting") c) investors who want to hear about ThisWeekIn.com,
LAUNCH.IS or Mahalo. d) press who want to re-run the piece e) partners who
want to leverage Mahalo's 20m+ uniques.

Efficiency wins..... efficiency and leverage can be found anywhere--you just
have to be open minded.

------
bugsy
Working 5 hours a day on projects for clients, taking 15 minute breaks once an
hour, and then working on the startup whenever there is time left after all
that isn't really the same as creating a startup in a serious way.

It also sounds like the wife is home all day and either a freelancer herself
or not working. Having full time child care available from a live in caretaker
is not really the same as having to raise 3 kids on your own or with a full
time working spouse.

~~~
wyclif
_Having full time child care available from a live in caretaker is not really
the same as having to raise 3 kids on your own_

I'm puzzled by your comment, because the author doesn't suggest those things
are the same. It sounds like you're projecting onto him, since he's writing
about what works for him.

~~~
bugsy
The article is one in a series of discussions about whether it is possible, or
well advised, to start up a company if one has small children at home.
Children need child care, health insurance, time, and money to support them.
This is a difficult situation for some one starting up a new company. It is
much better if you are single and unmarried to take on the risk of creating a
new business from scratch.

This particular gentleman's situation is that he has a full time high paying
job and a stay at home wife. The start up is a hobby he does in his spare
time. There is not much insight to be gained from this because it is self
evident that if you have full time paying work and a stay at home spouse, how
to take care of your children and support them is not a problem.

There are many scenarios under which starting up a company with small children
at home presents serious challenges and this is what has been discussed much
recently. This particular scenario, of being able to comfortably support a
spouse to stay at home with the children because one is primarily employed in
work that is not the start up, is not one of the scenarios in which children
are a particular challenge to overcome.

------
annajohnson
My husband and I quit full time jobs to build our second startup, whilst also
having two kids to raise (8 and 6 years old). I don't feel like it's hard at
all. I'm pretty disciplined, so I guess that helps. Perhaps I also see the
world differently. But overall we're happier, we spend more time with our kids
than when we were in jobs, and life is great.

I would also point out that the 'family business' is nothing new. Sure it may
be somewhat different when you're building a business to scale, but there are
plenty of examples of family businesses where the parents work huge hours and
are also raising kids. Heaps of examples come to mind where the parents are
literally managing the store 6 or 7 days a week, and somehow looking after
children as well.

If you see 'having a family' as a barrier then it will be a barrier.
Personally, raising kids and building a startup has never been an 'either/or'
choice. In fact, since I love my kids and also love building a company...
nothing could be better than having a life where I get to do both.

~~~
gregpilling
Well said. I wanted to write the same concept, but you are more eloquent.
There is an interesting effect when you have a company, the kids seem to pick
up the business skills by osmosis. My children constantly surprise me with how
much they know about my company.

------
jonathanjaeger
Definitely a good point that suggesting what someone can and can't do is not
necessarily a positive thing to do. However, using the term startup as a broad
generalization for all entrepreneurial endeavors can mean different things to
different people. There are certainly startups that can be juggled around with
other projects and life priorities. However, I'm sure there are countless very
successful startups that would not have succeeded had someone like the author
juggled all these other priorities at the same time. Not all startups can be
successful, and some require countless hours of busy work, coding, and other
tasks that would be a detriment to a family lifestyle.

Dave McClure put it well in this video of why not to do a startup:
<http://vimeo.com/15799330>

EDIT: I don't have enough life experience to know how efficient a person can
be when they have a family and manage crazy work hours, but my opinion is that
Calacanis wrote about what he thinks is optimal not REQUIRED.

------
armandososa
One question: If you're a freelancer working remotely from home, why don't you
move somewhere cheaper?

On latam most people live at $5 a day, you can live like a frikin' sultan with
$500. Live there for six months at 2 hours of consulting work and finish
AppIgnite, then return with the product done.

btw, I'm a super-fan of TechZing even when I got bad publicity there ;)

~~~
arthur_debert
I'm not sure where in latam you're thinking about, but at least in Brazil
these numbers are way off. Yes, you can live with $500 a month, but you'd go
without many luxuries such as internet connection, cel phone and so on.

Major cities (the largest 2 or 3) in Brazil have a cost of living very close
to cheaper cities of the USA. If you move to smaller towns, you begin to deal
with other issues (lack of infrastructure specially for kids) and so on.

~~~
armandososa
but I'm talking $500 _a day_.

------
Mz
To me, this looks like a very big piece of why he can do this and many people
are simply not able to make this kind of money: _I charge $100 per hour, which
means if I work 4-6 hours per day, five days per week, then we're in decent
shape financially and I'll have enough time left over to make significant
progress on AppIgnite._

If I could charge $100/hr, I could replace my current job with about 5 or so
hours of consulting _per week_ (or scale it up a bit to have a more lavish
lifestyle/pay down some debt), and then be free to do whatever the heck I
wanted the rest of the time.

------
jefarmstrong
You should subscribe to his podcast - <http://techzinglive.com>

It's a really fun tech podcast that is always one of the first things I listen
to when a new one comes out. Just check out the list of recent interviews:
Gabriel Weinberg, Derek Sivers, Jessica Mah, Patrick McKenzie, and more.

------
rjurney
Based on the title, was fully expecting top comment to chastise you for child
labor. Deeply disappointed.

------
jacquesm
> I'd like to point out that unlike Calacanis I don't feel comfortable
> suggesting to people what they can and can't do as I believe it all really
> depends on the individual and the context in which they're operating.

That's a key insight right there, most people will go around and tell others
what they can not do based on the experience of what they themselves can or
can't do, and then they automatically extrapolate to the rest of the world.
The reverse also holds true.

Whatever works for you is something you will only know by trying and doing,
nobody can tell you what you can or can not do.

> Taking the kids to the gym is probably where I gain the most leverage of the
> day because it's a kill three birds with one stone, triple-jump move.

Very clever!

> Also, you know all the time that most employees and on-site contractors
> spend in meetings or other such unproductive organizational activities, well
> I engage in none of that.

Haha, score one for all the guys and girls that work from home. I try to avoid
meetings like the plague, though I do have an 'office' in an IRC chat running.
It's where I gather with everybody that I work with and where you can dump
questions or have a few minutes of 'watercooler' talk.

> Another thing is that we keep our expenses pretty low and don't tend not to
> live very extravagantly.

Another winning quote. People that freelance sometimes fall in to the trap of
adjusting their lifestyle upwards when the money is coming in quickly, but
can't scale back when it does not. The safe approach is to stay low to the
ground and be frugal all the time.

Once your saving account is nice and fat _and_ you've been consistently
performing at a certain level you could consider raising your monthly
allowance (a bit!), if you feel the need to do so. For myself, I keep our
personal expenses to an absolute minimum.

> Another circumstance that allows me to pursue a startup is that my wife and
> I have figured out a very clear division of labor and separation of
> concerns.

Clarity and openness are another key element in both a relationship and
running a business. Having things clear is going to make sure there are no
underwater time-bombs too.

What a super article, bookmarked and I'll re-read it again in a couple of
days, lots of it applies to my situation directly and I'll try to get as much
mileage from it as I can squeeze out of there.

One key insight that is not spelled out here is that you seem to be living a
very regular life, and I suspect that that structure helps you to optimize
what you get out of a day.

Thank you very much for writing this all up, (you even found time for that!),
it is certainly inspiring.

------
freshlog
Cool, I like what I see OP.

One comment: AppIgnite looked like APPL or AAPL (Apple) on first glance, since
'l' and 'L' can look pretty similar on some fonts.

That said, all the best!

------
gridspy
Thank god. Finally a startup role model I really can aspire to.

As father to two cute toddlers, This overtime ramen stuff is totally
unobtainable.

Thanks!

