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I come at this with experience of both successful and failed startups while being married and raising kids. My question is do you want a "lifestyle" business w

I come at this with experience of both successful and failed startups while being married and raising kids. My question is do you want a "lifestyle" business where you can make life changing money for you & your family plus leave something for your kids or are you wanting to be a unicorn and/or change the world? Many times people in the tech startup world favor the unicorn idea, but the reality of it is you can make a lot of money and personally be very successful, plus make others successful all while not working yourself to death. This requires a lot of focus on making a product/service and being profitable from as early on as possible. In fairness I never worked on a problem that could change the world until what I am doing now, but I am currently in a funded startup where that is our focus. Personally, in my past, I have done what many in the tech industry wouldn't think is cool or a rocketship, but it changed people's lives, was profitable very early on and we had a hell of a lot of fun, but we would never have been considered on the unicorn track. This is for the businesses I created, I have been part of funded and rocketship startups prior. But if you could put a business together that would be say, $5-$15M a year in revenue over 5-7 years and profitable at 30-40% where you control the majority stake and it just keeps generating revenue year after year would you be happy? Honestly you can start this type of business while working a full time job, it requires a bit of time management but you can do it. When I did this as a FTE I would work during the day, come home have dinner, spend time with the kids and wife and than start working on the project at like 9-10pm when kids went to bed, some nights I'd take off for time with the wife too. Then I'd pick one day a weekend and work all day, but stop around 4 or so and spend time with the family. This let me have some balance, but TBH it is still hard, but once things start picking up it gets easier. I will say that if you go this route you have to expect you'll have lean times where it is a struggle, and flush times when things feel amazing, it is a bit of a roller coaster, so you need to have balance and a supportive wife. And you need to make sure you prioritize family times so you don't become the MIA parent. You are welcome to send me an email (check my profile) if you want to chat about it, having done it I get it is not easy.

nojvek 8y ago
Amazing advice. Good to know someone with a family has made it work.
mikert5671 8y ago
This kind of thing sounds great, any suggestions for area of businesses that you would look at starting? Part of the challenge is that the range of things that you could do is massive.
- davismwfl 8y ago
  That's it, once you stop thinking about the typical tech ideas as your central focus and start thinking about things you can do quickly and make money at the world has millions of waiting clients and ideas. I have brought this up before on HN, if you look around in any town you will find plumbers, electricians and other "trades" people (or mom & pop shops) who started their business and have some basic business sense. Many are sitting on businesses that have high margins and can easily become multi-million dollar businesses (or already are) and make their founders quite wealthy. A lot of time people get so focused in their narrow area they forget to look outside of the industry or type of work they do. I am not suggesting you become a plumber, just that if you look at those businesses there are always needs to fulfill for people. And technology as a whole seriously ignores traditional businesses like these, a mistake I do not make. To find these ideas, talk to everyone. I even found clients from talking to fellow parents at my kids sporting events. We'd talk about work they'd open up where they worked and I'd chat them up about what the opportunities and issues were. 90% of communication is listening and asking calculated (not in the evil sense) questions. I always follow the rule that every issue, complaint or failure is an opportunity to provide value, even if it was my own.
JamesAdir 8y ago
Great advice. I don't see it as "change the world ideas" vs. something that is not. Pinterest isn't a changing world idea, so is Atrium or something else. The difference is do you want to work on a business of your own and as with any business it has to be profitable (I don't why it's called lifestyle business - it's just business). The other option is to try and get someone to gamble millions of dollars on your idea without being profitable for years. Getting someone to gamble like this just requires a lot more time. That's all.
- davismwfl 8y ago
  I agree, I don't like the term "lifestyle business", it is just a business, but in the tech industry I have seen that term used in a derogatory way when frankly I love that type of business. Raising money can be done outside of the traditional tech VC world as well. High net worth individuals who themselves own businesses many times are willing to invest on pretty decent terms. But your point is super accurate, raising money takes time focused on raising money and not building the business or product, which is why incubators/VCs favor multi-founder startups. The incubators all know essentially one founder will spend the majority of their time raising capital, meeting new investors and finding warm intros to investors etc. It is a full time job.

nojvek 8y ago

Amazing advice. Good to know someone with a family has made it work.

mikert5671 8y ago

This kind of thing sounds great, any suggestions for area of businesses that you would look at starting? Part of the challenge is that the range of things that you could do is massive.

davismwfl 8y ago
That's it, once you stop thinking about the typical tech ideas as your central focus and start thinking about things you can do quickly and make money at the world has millions of waiting clients and ideas. I have brought this up before on HN, if you look around in any town you will find plumbers, electricians and other "trades" people (or mom & pop shops) who started their business and have some basic business sense. Many are sitting on businesses that have high margins and can easily become multi-million dollar businesses (or already are) and make their founders quite wealthy. A lot of time people get so focused in their narrow area they forget to look outside of the industry or type of work they do. I am not suggesting you become a plumber, just that if you look at those businesses there are always needs to fulfill for people. And technology as a whole seriously ignores traditional businesses like these, a mistake I do not make. To find these ideas, talk to everyone. I even found clients from talking to fellow parents at my kids sporting events. We'd talk about work they'd open up where they worked and I'd chat them up about what the opportunities and issues were. 90% of communication is listening and asking calculated (not in the evil sense) questions. I always follow the rule that every issue, complaint or failure is an opportunity to provide value, even if it was my own.

JamesAdir 8y ago

Great advice. I don't see it as "change the world ideas" vs. something that is not. Pinterest isn't a changing world idea, so is Atrium or something else. The difference is do you want to work on a business of your own and as with any business it has to be profitable (I don't why it's called lifestyle business - it's just business). The other option is to try and get someone to gamble millions of dollars on your idea without being profitable for years. Getting someone to gamble like this just requires a lot more time. That's all.

davismwfl 8y ago
I agree, I don't like the term "lifestyle business", it is just a business, but in the tech industry I have seen that term used in a derogatory way when frankly I love that type of business. Raising money can be done outside of the traditional tech VC world as well. High net worth individuals who themselves own businesses many times are willing to invest on pretty decent terms. But your point is super accurate, raising money takes time focused on raising money and not building the business or product, which is why incubators/VCs favor multi-founder startups. The incubators all know essentially one founder will spend the majority of their time raising capital, meeting new investors and finding warm intros to investors etc. It is a full time job.