11 ms·

Ask HN: Family startups

3 points by oliverrenner 10y ago

Despite many people will say its a bad idea, i would love to start a company / side project with my partner. I am a contractor and can easily sustain both of us, while having enough time to to work on our own project. Are there any success stories about that, or ideas where to start ?

mattbgates 10y ago
Plenty of husbands and wives are in business together. If you have a good relationship with family and/or friends, than that is a good start, but just be sure define each other's roles in the startup are and everyone is contributing equally.
mswen 10y ago
Around 2010 I became acquainted with a married couple in their mid to late 60s who were serial entrepreneurs together. They had built and grown a library management software company in the 1980-2000 era. When they sold that company off they could have retired but at some point they started a company that combined web scraping and semantic enhancement sold enhanced organized data to various companies to incorporate into their own corporate and customer databases. They were two of the smartest people that I have met in my business ventures. What I loved is that they each recognized and honored their partner's strengths. Peter was very strong technically and Kate was the business strategist, sales, marketing and deal maker. And, to my eyes they seemed deeply in love and still enjoyed spending time together. We almost found a way to do business together but they were at a different phase in life. They were getting ready to sell their second business and were psychologically getting ready to move money into more stable investments rather than another start-up. As Peter and Kate demonstrated it can work wonderfully to mix business and personal relationships. However, most people find that the combination is just too stressful. I love my wife but have no sense that we could be a Peter and Kate. My advice is that if you do work together you need to make sure that each partner brings something to the business that is vital, is in their competency zone and that they enjoy doing.

3 points by oliverrenner 10y ago

mattbgates 10y ago

Plenty of husbands and wives are in business together. If you have a good relationship with family and/or friends, than that is a good start, but just be sure define each other's roles in the startup are and everyone is contributing equally.

mswen 10y ago

Around 2010 I became acquainted with a married couple in their mid to late 60s who were serial entrepreneurs together. They had built and grown a library management software company in the 1980-2000 era. When they sold that company off they could have retired but at some point they started a company that combined web scraping and semantic enhancement sold enhanced organized data to various companies to incorporate into their own corporate and customer databases. They were two of the smartest people that I have met in my business ventures. What I loved is that they each recognized and honored their partner's strengths. Peter was very strong technically and Kate was the business strategist, sales, marketing and deal maker. And, to my eyes they seemed deeply in love and still enjoyed spending time together. We almost found a way to do business together but they were at a different phase in life. They were getting ready to sell their second business and were psychologically getting ready to move money into more stable investments rather than another start-up. As Peter and Kate demonstrated it can work wonderfully to mix business and personal relationships. However, most people find that the combination is just too stressful. I love my wife but have no sense that we could be a Peter and Kate. My advice is that if you do work together you need to make sure that each partner brings something to the business that is vital, is in their competency zone and that they enjoy doing.