I founded a startup with my brother 5 years ago - we launched in my two weeks paternity leave from work. For the first 4 years we both held down full time jobs

I founded a startup with my brother 5 years ago - we launched in my two weeks paternity leave from work. For the first 4 years we both held down full time jobs and worked on our startup every evening. I had my 2nd child when the startup turned 4 any my brother had his first around the same time. I'm not sure if it's because we are family, but we've always had a policy (not written down or set in stone) but that if one of us wants some time off then we do. We pretty much do normal hours (10 - 6), we still work a few evenings, but we're now both full time so haven't got the added stress of a 'day job'. It was always our dream to be able to work full time on our startup and now that's a reality there is honestly no other job i'd rather be doing. We both get to see our kids everyday, i'm due to be taking my eldest (4) swimming at lunch. Based on my experience (every startup is different), we do live and breath it, but at the same time we always make time for family, holidays and anything else we want to do (taking the kids for days out, nursery, the gym). Our startup is actually doing better than ever and I personally feel that because we put in all the work in the first few years whilst holding down a full time job we are now in a position to be able to enjoy the fruits of our labour and have a great work/life balance.