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Ask HN: Do you have a startup spouse?
48 points by startup_spouse on June 23, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 28 comments
Hi everyone :)

My husband introduced me to HN a long time ago and I always enjoy the stuff you all post, but I've never commented on anything before.

I decided to start a blog about being a startup spouse and was wondering if I could get your feedback. How many of you are married (or in a relationship, startup spouse is merely a title that sounds nice because of alliteration)? Does your significant other have any funny stories or advice they'd like to share with other startup spouses?

Any feedback, constructive criticism, stories, advice, etc. from you or your startup spouse is appreciated :)

www.thestartupspouse.com




Nice idea :)

A friend once gave me this advice:

"I work all the time. Day, night, weekends, all the time. Sometimes my wife will want some time with me, just to talk. But since I’m always busy, I’m usually at my computer when we have our conversations. What she’s noticed is, I only half-listen when I’m doing that. I’m splitting my attention between her and my laptop.

"This hasn’t been good. I could tell it was affecting our marriage. So I resolved to shut the lid of my laptop whenver she wanted to speak. And I’ve been doing that. It hasn’t been easy, let me tell you. But I’ve been trying."

I'm getting married soon and have been conscious of this issue as well. I've also found Meg Cadoux Hirshberg's column in Inc. Magazine to be insightful:

http://www.inc.com/author/meg-cadoux-hirshberg

Good luck!


That is great advice. We've noticed the same half-listening thing. I'm just as guilty if my husband tries to speak to me when I'm working on any writing or translation projects. Or even if I'm engrossed in a Twitter convo ;)

A startup marriage takes effort (from both sides) but it really is worth it and so much fun :)

Thanks for the link and the feedback!


My co-founder and I are both married with small children. We were both full time developers before founding our company. We started working on a side project at night for a few months and then heard about a local Utah version of YCombinator called http://www.BoomStartup.com (We're IActionable.com). We were accepted, but there were many late night discussions with my wife as we tried to figure out a plan to survive on the little investment money we would get. (compared to the nice comfortable salary I once had!)

Our wives are very supportive. It does take a special and patient person to support someone starting a company. But I do think my wife is somewhat excited to see me actually follow through and finish a project for once :)

I showed her your blog and maybe she'll comment with some experiences or thoughts sometime. She went through the list of roles you had and agreed that she plays many of those.

Good luck with the blog!


Wow, you guys have a great looking idea!

I feel like the usability mantra circa 2000-2010 was "Don't make me think" and I hope the usability mantra for the decade of 2010-2020 will be "Don't make me unsure". Using inspiration from games, I hope UI developers will make sure to give instant feed back. When a user makes a mistake the user will be informed, when a user does something correct the user will be informed.

Thus using software will be more like a fun video game rather than a frustrating experience.

I plan to write a blog post on these thoughts. Let me know if you guys have any input.


Thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment. I'm glad you and your co-founder both have supportive wives, as I do feel we add a lot ;) I would love to hear their stories sometime!


http://www.thestartupspouse.com

^Clickable.


Thanks ;)


Read it to my spouse as she lay in bed... she loved it!

And her first comment was can she have a business card... with the title "Startup Spouse"...

Awesome!

Just add a Facebook share link... so I can share on Facebook. :)


Thanks so much. I'd love to hear any stories she'd like to share.

The business card idea is brilliant! Maybe I should offer those? lol

I've added a share widget to the sidebar, thanks for the suggestion :)


Good post. Another way to put it?

"Hitched to Someone Else's Dream" http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080901/hitched-to-someone-else...

"I got sucked into his enterprise -- our livelihood now depended on it -- and though I had little input into its direction, I stood to lose everything if it failed."

Article echoes much of what my wife has dealt with in 15 years I've been building companies.


I'm assuming you've seen this, but if you haven't: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html


Oh God, yeah. Working like crazy for yourself is one thing. Forcing others to adopt crazy work habits is another.

If people are genuinely excited about working for you and choose to put in long hours, you thank them, reward them for their efforts and remind them to go home, eat, sleep, spend time with their family, etc. Some people have higher thresholds, some people lower, so I don't think you can enforce any particular rule straight across the board. But you can provide a healthy environment. If my husband ever became a tyrant, he wouldn't be my husband anymore. He knows that :)


I'll never forget reading the EA spouse stuff for the first time. It's like the emblem for "Never, EVER, treat your staff like this".


Why anyone would stay at a job like that is beyond me. 12 hour days 7 days a week? That's just stupid. Much rather program mind-numbingly boring business apps and go home at 5.


Ah, but perhaps you have never had the opportunity to be in a Reality Distortion Field. And your choice is certainly better for family life.


Luckily my wife and I are both developers. We've always worked together from corporations to a number of startups that we were involved in.

I can't begin to imagine what it must be like for a spouse who has to put up with a significant other working in a startup... Crazy hours, the highs, the lows, lack of sleep, bad moods, wondering where cash is going to come from.

On the other hand, doing startups together has been an immensely rewarding experience. Through our shared experiences we've become closer than I could possibly have imagined. So, for us, it has all been worth it - at least emotionally.

I really feel for people who aren't able to spend enough time together, or are finding empathy for a partner hard to muster. I can hardly begin to imagine how bad it must have been for the poor EA wives - awful.


Interesting topic-I love and have worked at startups for the past few years and my soon-to-be spouse has worked at a big corp. for an equal amount of time. We both work in tech,and he is sympathetic to my crazy hours and understands why I have to work on a Saturday, midnight, and "have to answer this email right now."I think as long as you unplug and have devoted time to your personal life, everything works out. In the past, I let work dominate my life which diminished my personal life. I think I am engaged today b/c I set time aside to grow in that way. It's all about boundaries and understanding, that's been my experience.


Nice first post and like how you've written it in a gender-neutral tone. It kind of depresses me as I envy people who have supporting partners, and feel as an entrepreneurial woman those attributes are harder to come by in a male partner. I know it's generalising, but most guys want to take the centre stage. Do they want to hold the home and emotional front together? Probably not. Sigh... :-)


Thank you. I tried to be neutral without sounding stuffy, as a lot of lit with "s/he" tends to sound (in my opinion). Plus it really annoys me when people assume all entrepreneurs are men, or that no entrepreneurs are gay. I may not always remember to do the "s/he" thing, but I wanted the first post to establish that neutrality.

If you want a supportive partner, you will find one. It may not happen right away and it'll probably be when/where you least expect it, but it'll happen. In the meantime, don't be any less than 100% happy just because you haven't found him yet :) You know that saying about smiling all the time because you never know who could be falling in love with your smile at that moment? Yeah it sounds cheesy but it's true ;)

It would be great if there was a study done about whether those attributes are more common in women. I'm sure there are some great men to be found that would gladly give up centre stage to a strong woman :) I'll keep my eyes open ;)

Wait, did I just add matchmaker to my list of duties? lol


My wife and I have been married my entire start-up career (going on 8 years). I think she'd more or less describe it much like me having any other job. I've never worked particularly long hours. I probably carry a bit more stress than others, but that's really it (and I've gotten pretty good at managing it).


Thanks for commenting. I have found the same.

At the outset as an entrepreneur there was a lot of calibrating and learning what was reasonable. We have a very sane and wonderfully paced life despite me founding and working on a startup for the past three years.

Entrepreneurs have a lot to prove - to investors, to the market, to customers. Time put in does not prove anything to anyone. Especially not your spouse.

Working reasonable hours (to me) is a sign of a healthy work environment, be it a startup or large corporation. Working under conditions of extreme uncertainty to offer a new product or service doesn't necessarily mean that all those hours together are going to be lost.


... You're pulling my leg, right? :)

You must be really good at managing your time, being efficient, and resisting the urge to take your work to bed with you!

Do you offer coaching services? lol


Same, we don't work particularly long hours either - though sometimes we work at weird hours, which needs to change.

If you make your business decisions right, there's no need to work particularly long hours.


My co-founder and I just got engaged :)


Me and my wife work on the startups together. She is good with people and I good with systems, so it makes a good team. It make more sense as all the the dynamics are already in place.


Very cool concept. My wife could probably write a book about what she puts up with... a supportive spouse makes all the difference. I'll tell her to follow the blog :)


Thanks so much. I'm sure she has many entertaining experiences she could recount :) Please tell her to share some!


No offense but, I read your list of "who will...?" and immediately thought: HELL NO, NOT ME.

That's what an assistant is for.

We hired two assistants (one on the way out) to do things like pick up things from the post office, sort out paperwork, fetch food, and naturally, learn a lot about business/our code.

And we work together!

If you love your wife/husband and want to keep that relationship happy, seems like you either have to marry a martyr... or protect those bonds by not turning your no doubt equally intelligent, equally valuable spouse into a go-fer.

Support is beautiful and all, but there are limits.




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