Is it possible to build a good startup part time (while still working in another company for full time)? Is there any founders out there which still can start and grow their business successfully while raising up children? Should I wait once having enough life saving and once my children a bit older so that I will be more ready for grinding?
This is the only link related to this topic in HN[1].
[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10019268](https://news....
I have two under 3 years old kids. Working from home during pandemic, helping my wife and managing two kids brought me to the edge of my sanity. The worst thing is tantrums, high pitched screams would leave me physically exhausted within a few minutes. I started to drink more often.
I didn't think I could continue to work from home with kids in the house. I was ready to quit and figured it won't look so bad to have a gap on your resume during pandemic. But then instead I got second part-time job as a junior developer.
This gave me real excuse to avoid managing kids during work hours, and then later night. I spend 5-8pm with my kids and I have more energy and it is much higher quality time with them. After putting them to sleep and watching some TV with wife, I go back to work. I wake up more refreshed than when I was going to bed early. Pure coding is almost meditative for me, so maybe that's why I feel more rested.
Also extra money allowed us to hire babysitter who can assist my wife during the day and we still have extra money after babysitter's expenses. We also got cleaners, started to send laundry out, ordered in more food, enrolled kids in various day camps or classes.
But this is not really apples to apples comparison, startups are a lot harder than a job as a junior developer. And if your startup is not bringing in cash, you may not have enough of extra money to hire help, which may strain your relationship.
300 IQ move here, bravo sir, well done. That also alleviates workload from your partner for sure.
You have to stop and ask yourself what it’s all for. What is the point of anything? For me kids filled in a large missing piece of the puzzle I couldn’t tell was missing.
Your startup can happen any time. Kids happens once, maybe twice and you are going to want to be there.
They’ll be in school so soon and then you’ll at least have a clear time in the day.
The more time you spend with your kids the more you’ll like it - and it will probably inspire a ton of ideas!
Misery is doing one thing while thinking about another
That is a great quote!
For the kids, for your health, for your wife :)
I'm 40+ and have a child under 4. When they were born I cut my work back to 1/3 so that I could be a home dad.
It's the best decision I ever made and well worth the (real) financial pain. I can't convey in this text box how fulfilling being a dad has been. This is a time and joy you can never get back. Your kid will be better off from time they spent with you than what the money could have bought.
Raising a kid is a never ending exhausting slog. Two parents that can do everything means you can both get some mental respite. I'm sure our relationship would be worse now if I'd been away working every day. You get to know a lot of other parents and the tension provider/parent puts on relationships is real.
There are downsides. With my wife and I both working part time (nights, naps, 2 days of kinder) we are going backwards financially, but we will survive until school when I'll go back full time. I'm extremely grateful to work in an occupation where that's even possible.
Best wishes.
I certainly couldn't do it, and I had a lot of advantages that most people don't (family help nearby, effectively unlimited runway). I tried for a couple years, but I just found I was so much slower as a father. There's no such thing as focus time with young kids in the house, you can't pull all-nighters to bang a feature out in a couple days, and then you lose a lot to context-switching overhead. And it's hard to get high-performers to work with you as a new parent, both because you have so much less time and flexibility to seek them out, and because they also know that your kids will (should?) come before the startup and "Why make someone a priority when you're just an option for them?"
Ended up going back to a big company known for work/life balance and generous paternity leave, where my efforts don't make a material difference to the success of the company. If there's effectively zero chance of success, it's not worth sacrificing time with my family to beat my head against the odds.
So yeah, it's possible. But is it right for you? We can't say without knowing more.
But you don’t have to be an “incredible” salesperson.
Be able to explain the value prop of your product. Know your customer and know how you help them. Become good at having them know this too.
But that’s just rote sales and marketing. Nothing “incredible” about it.
But yes, if you are technical and hold “sales” as some kind of contemptuous skill, you won’t do well.
But WeWork is also proof that unless there's some substance to go with the selling the story won't end well.
I have a lot more to say about how this works and why the codependents keep falling for it, but that is the gist of how it works. Sounds like a great book to look into for a CoDA study.
What made us not go insane was:
My wife was stay at home.
My wife supported what I was doing and bought in to the impact it could have on my career.
Grandparents nearby that regularly came to help out with the kids. My parents were very supportive (again they knew it would help my career)
I would wake up early on weekends and spend time with the kids so my wife could sleep in and have a break. This gave me 1-1 time with them. Usually I’d take them out of the house somewhere fun.
My main work wasn’t too intense. Indeed they even gave me some time to work on the book.
I’d say it’s doable if your full time job is laid back, your wife is fully onboard, and you have lots of extended family support. Even better if you can get your main job to invest or supportive!
I remember have skim your book, although I didn't read every pages. But as any good technical book and as you said, not everyone are having sufficient energy to average 60 hour weeks for 1.5 years. Put aside they are also a parent. :)
I would say that it all depends on funding. I have bootstrapped before, and I could never do that now. Perhaps more accurately, I would not want to do that now.
Having raised funds for this start up, my salary is a lot lower than it was working in enterprise, but it’s enough to support me and my family.
I have two Cofounders to share the load. One is also a parent, one isn’t. They pull a lot of weight, but none of us have to work ourselves to death. Having a good founding team is crucial.
My wife is at home full-time - Chief of Domestic Operations - and that’s what makes it work. Because she enjoys that role and I can feed us all, things work out.
With that support structure (funds, founding team, supportive spouse), it’s very doable. Still hard work, but the very enjoyable good kind of hard work.
I feel that this is very important and makes a huge difference. I think most families still have a "primary" caregiver (by that I mean it's not 50%-50%), even if not stay-at-home. Not only being that parent is incredibly time consuming [1], but it also comes with a draining mental load (raising kids is an endless grind of having to make decisions in the dark).
Grandparents and other community support can also be very beneficial.
[1] At some point during partial lockdowns, I clocked 70+ hours per week spent with my children. Meanwhile my partner was not slacking off averaging 40+ hours. That's with two full-time jobs, only two children, and still some daycare access (child care was prioritized in my area and was shut down only during the direst of the pandemic).
Yeah I think I should start with simple software side project and taking it slow but steady.
This could mean that you can be there at the times you need to "be there" and work around that: like in the evenings when the children are in bed, and/or early morning if that's more your thing.
That would give you the option to work 20-25 hours a week for your main part time job and then another 20 hours a week for your start up idea while still working ~40 hours a week.
Personally I would say it's well worth spending a couple of years trying that out instead of going down the path of 12+ hour work days with a family.
So I'd say go for it! Best of Luck!
You don't have to "grind" at the expense of your family (i.e. what you're working for!) like the influencers continually tout.
Was it hard? Absolutely. Is it still hard? Absolutely. But I absolutely think it's doable. You're not late.
I would recommend testing heavily as there will be inevitable interruptions around toddlers and infants and it's easy to half finish something and forget you did it. Or worse rip it out but not replace it with the refactored version.
Set aside time for all of the above. When it is time to spend time with kids, really spend time with them instead of chauffeuring them around to have other people spend time with them. Do things with your family, and then sit down and focus on the project.
I'm not saying it will be easy. It will be harder on all fronts, and it probably is not the answer for most people. But it can be done.
I'm 34, have a 3 year old at home and my current startup hit product-market fit at pretty much the same time as my son was born.
I work about 40 hours a week, keep a sane and flexible schedule, pay myself a market salary and try to keep the business mostly profitable.
It also helped to have investors that were 100% on-board with all of this and are supportive of running a calm company: https://calmfund.com/
I would agree with starting on the side though, regardless of how hard that may be. The stress of suddenly being without a job, or worse, having the pressure on you to make your company work while also dealing with the stress of raising a baby does not sound great to me.
Source: currently trying this, and while the side job often has to give, it’s always at the expense of more important things, and my livelihood doesn’t depend on it.
But personally, I would not recommend it. Find a job you can spend lots of time at home or otherwise spending quality time with your new family. They're only young once, and this is not time you can get back later.
I juggled a day job and side-startup while my child was a toddler. My wife and parents picked the slack on the nights where I had to push towards a hard deadline and I leaned heavily on my team so that I could be present for family time. The company was profitable and we successfully sold it to a private party.
For my current startup, I was very up front with my co-founder about making sure I was around to do school drop-offs and pick-ups. We're fully remote so there's no commute and we predominantly work asynchronously to avoid meetings. I mostly work during school hours and pick up again in the evening after the bedtime routine.
It's not for everybody and doesn't leave a lot of "me" time, but I'm personally finding a lot of fulfillment in trying to build a family-friendly remote-first company.
IMO, the grind is overrated and merely covers up impending failure in many startups. Start small, stay focused, be extremely intentional in everything that you do/don't do. Grind when necessary (like to close a client or a big push).
I really enjoy thinking of it as "working at the peak of sustainability".
Does it have to be a "startup." Is there a business you can start and grow at a reasonable pace?
There is such thing as ministry of presence. It's the value others receive by your simply living life with them in an attentive and caring way. IMO, the typical startup will require so much from you, you won't be able to invest well in your family.
I'd encourage you to make family investment a top priority. I'm 40 and I've done freelancing and now own a dev consulting company. But I deliberately avoided the startup lifestyle or expectations. I prioritized my family and I've not regretted it. I'm not successful by some standards, but I won't lay on my death bed someday regretting not being there for my wife and kids.
There's plenty of examples of lighter companies you can do on Indie Hackers. But generally, it's the ones which aren't profitable enough to be seed funded or too risky to the point that you wouldn't jump into it full time. If you're making a SaaS or a Instacart, you won't be able to manage that part time.
Some old problems might be worth it. For example, Android still doesn't have a good note taking app. It's a problem old enough that nobody is going to fund it.
And if it doesn't work out, at least you've done a little research and can get a head start once your kids are a little older.
As others have pointed out, the key is focus. You have a family and they demand / deserve some amount of your time.
So make that time. Prioritize it.
There will always be more to do in your company than you or your team can address. Focus on the important stuff, say no to the rest.
Don't sweat.. If there are systems and processes you will be able to manage after an initial period of grind
You also need to have an agreement on what trade offs you’re both willing to make, and for how long.
