5 ms·

I deeply respect Jeff's decision to put his family first. I have a general question though. I am an ordinary programmer at an ordinary job working ordinary hour

by jxcole 15y ago

I deeply respect Jeff's decision to put his family first. I have a general question though. I am an ordinary programmer at an ordinary job working ordinary hours. From those of you who have started their own project full time, is it impossible to run a start up and work ordinary hours? Or is it really necessary to sacrifice all other aspects of your life to be successful?

jayferd 15y ago
I wish I knew the answer to that question. I know that most startups will ask you to sacrifice other aspects of your life, which I think is really unfortunate.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
tikhonj 15y ago
I think the real problem isn't that you have to work long hours, it's that you get so involved in whatever you're doing that you end up working far longer than you planned.
ry0ohki 15y ago
It's definitely possible to only clock in 8 hours at the office and be successful, but I know mentally the startup is with you 24/7 and that alone can be quite draining.
benmathes 15y ago
Startups are marathons, not sprints; It's about making the right decisions most (if not all) of the time when building, hiring, marketing, etc. Fatigue and exhaustion mean bad decisions; There's plenty of research to back this up: http://likesbuildingthings.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-know-many-many-people-out-here-in.html http://likesbuildingthings.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-know-many-... People who are willing to take the risk of founding tend to be workaholics by nature, but you don't need to be a workaholic by nature to be a founder. It's bad for you longterm and it sets a poisonous precedent for your company culture.
- dpark 15y ago
  I find this metaphor interesting, because in a marathon, you run the entire time. At least if you want to win, or even race competitively. You might not be sprinting, but you're running at a hard pace until the finish line,
  - Jach 15y ago
    "What type of runner can run full speed from the very start of the race? That's right. Someone who runs very short distances. But as programmers, we are smarter than that. We just fire the starter pistol again every 100 yards. I don’t know why runners haven't figured that out." --Rich Hickey
    - majelix 15y ago
      Can you expand on that?
      - crntaylor 15y ago
        He's mocking the concept of a 'sprint' [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(scrum)#Sprint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(scrum)#Sprint
  - benmathes 15y ago
    Have you heard of an ultrarun before? It's a run that's longer than a marathon, maybe 50 miles, maybe 100 miles. It's all dependent on the local geography. You don't run those at a fast pace, you complete them in like 8-11 hours. Perhaps that's a better metaphor.
    - zachleat 15y ago
      Does this make it safe to assume that neither of the commenters here run marathons?
      - 15y ago
thematt 15y ago
It's definitely possible. I have a full time job, a girlfriend, work out everyday and after all that I still manage to run two startups on the side. It's mostly about cutting out non-value-added activities while at the same time optimizing every free minute you have.
- DonnyV 15y ago
  Thats not the same. After you have a family things are very different.
  - nollidge 15y ago
    Sure, but jxcole wasn't asking about families necessarily, just how much time a startup absorbs.
  - stympy 15y ago
    True, but still doable. I have a family, full-time job, and two side startups (5 and 4 years old), but I still manage to work out regularly, spend time with the family, relax a bit, and even sleep. You can do it, you just need to use your time wisely.
swilliams 15y ago
It's possible, but really hard, especially if you have a family. And actually, building a product in your free time isn't that rough; it's supporting it that will consume all of your free time. Think about it, let's say you have a perfectly reasonable 40 hour work week. What would be a good extra amount to put into a side project/startup? 20 hours? Now you're working 60 hours per week, just under an extra 3 hours per night. How long can you keep that up? How much time will that take away from your family? Let's say you stick it through and launch. The questions and support emails roll in. How much of that will eat up your extra 20 hours per week to work on bugs and new features? And will your customers be ok with waiting the extra time while you slog away at your day job? And what happens if that 40 hour/week job goes into crunch mode and goes up to 50 or maybe even more? Doing this isn't necessarily hard in terms of difficulty, but it does take a LOT of time.
WadeF 15y ago
In my experience the actual physical amount of time spent doing something can be pretty ordinary, but the amount of time spent mentally is enormous. When I'm hanging out with friends or my family I'm not 100% there. I'm running over marketing scenarios in my head, trying to figure out how to squash this weird bug, or figuring out whether I should spend time talking with that one investor or not. So no, I don't think it needs to take over all aspects of your life, but I'm not sure you can consciously stop it.
jacobr 15y ago
I also sincerely wonder if it's not possible to just slow down a bit? If there's no parental leave where you live, take time off and then return to your job after 1 year or so, at 80% speed?
- bradt 15y ago
  I think it would be difficult for Stack Overflow to slow down. In the post, Jeff links to one of his previous blog posts that describes the "running as fast as they can" culture that's been instilled in the company: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/go-that-way-really-fast.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/go-that-way-really-... I can see why he'd take some time off and maybe start another venture that would lend itself to a more laid back culture.
ahoyhere 15y ago
That depends on what you qualify a "startup." My husband and I run a SaaS/infoproduct business which grossed right around $600k last year and we do not work long hours (or even 40 hours/wk). In 2011, we invested heavily in our next product, a new office, a lot of lawyering & tax accountanting (and made a couple rather big (hiring) mistakes with money), so our take-home wasn't glorious, but next year it will be. We: * built the product in a hack day a week or so for 3 mos * worked pretty hard the first year, since we were doing it alongside consulting; but literally there were weeks, and months, where we did nothing, and our business survived & even grew for a time * quit consulting in 2010 (me in Jan, my husband later) To put this in perspective: In late 2009, I had mono, which knocked me out for a few mos. I got better for a while, but then a series of viral infections landed me with chronic fatigue syndrome. Several times since then, I've been incapacitated for 1-3 mos. Now I'm mostly better, but every time I get sick, I'm unable to work for a week or two. I don't make it up by working long hours when I'm well, either. We're talking 20-30 hours a week for me, max. We haven't worked more than a 40-hour work week for more than two weeks at a time in nearly 2 years, and our biz is 3 years old. In short: it's totally doable. Focus on solving a pain people will pay for. Build something simple, which doesn't require a lot of maintenance. Choose customers who aren't needy fuckers. Pick your hours. Example: Our 1st product is a time tracking tool. Unsexy but it's got a run rate of just over $300k/yr now, just over 3 years old. We had 8% growth in revenue month over month from Dec to Jan. Which is totally sexy. And… right now we're on a month-long trip to NZ. I've been working an average of an hour a day because I'm running a course to teach people how to build this kind of biz. (That's in 2-4 hour stretches, not actually 1 hour a day, which would be useless.) My husband hasn't worked at all on this trip except yesterday he had to reset one of our (redundant) servers because of an apparent hardware failure. That'll probably take a couple more hours of his time this week. Sure, we could work more, hit it harder, and probably earn more money. But we're nicely on track for $1.5m in yearly revenue inside of ~2 more years (when I turn 30!) so I figure, why bother? What could we NOT have with $750k/yr of sustainable household income, even if we spent half the gross revenue on overhead (which is ridiculously unlikely)? We already get to touch thousands of people's lives every day. We can already invest in charities and nice things. As Felix Dennis, who's ludicrously rich (in my mind), wrote in his very excellent How To Get Rich: "Ask me what I will give you if you could wave a magic wand and give me my youth back. The answer would be everything I own and everything I will ever own." He says no less than 3 times in his book that if he could go back to his youth and live a different life, he would have spent way, way, way less time accumulating his obscene (hundreds of $mils) riches and more time living. I take him at his word. In short, it's totally possible. You won't believe it if you spend too much time reading HN, however. Or people will tell you that your ambition is too small… and sneer that you run a "lifestyle business." But then, you will have a life, so you can laugh all the way to the bank. NB: I blog about this stuff at http://unicornfree.com http://unicornfree.com in case you're interested.
aledalgrande 15y ago
First of all, you have to really love your startup. Programming all day, then getting home and have to do the same job in the night can be really draining. Second you have to make it profitable as soon as possible, so you can leave your job and at least start contracting 2-3 days per week, leaving full days to work on your startup. Third, the sacrifice depends on the nature of your startup: if it's a no brainer like a management tool and you're a smart programmer, you won't need to get mad. But if it's really techy, then you better find some mate to not get lost in the venture and use up every minute of your free time. That's my experience and what I've seen around the community here.
garrettdimon 15y ago
I may be a little late to the party on this, but it's definitely possible. There are times where regular hours are impossible, but for the most part, it's definitely possible. I agree wholeheartedly with everything Amy has said about their experience with Freckle. In the four years since quitting my day job to freelance and build my app, I've gotten engaged, married, gone on a honeymoon, got a dog, gone to Europe for a week, and had our first child. I also regularly go on vacation and go snowboarding. I've been full-time on Sifter for about half of that time. So I was part-time for about two years, and that was hard work balancing the two, but it wasn't that bad. I just split time between freelancing and building the company. It was stressful at times, but well worth it. In my case these days, as a solo founder, it's a bit involved. I work every day, but for the most part, I still only work 40 hours per week. I work from home and see my wife and daughter all of the time and find time to go to the gym every single day. I take breaks and spend time with them whenever I want, and I just work whenever it fits into the family schedule. The only catch is that it's very hard to stop thinking about work in my downtime, but I think that has as much to do with me and being passionate about work as it does being a business owner. It hasn't been a cakewalk by any means, but it's entirely possible. I've got a slide deck that covers some of the personal side of things if you're interested. (http://bootstrapping.sifterapp.com http://bootstrapping.sifterapp.com)

by jxcole 15y ago

jayferd 15y ago

I wish I knew the answer to that question. I know that most startups will ask you to sacrifice other aspects of your life, which I think is really unfortunate.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

tikhonj 15y ago

I think the real problem isn't that you have to work long hours, it's that you get so involved in whatever you're doing that you end up working far longer than you planned.

ry0ohki 15y ago

It's definitely possible to only clock in 8 hours at the office and be successful, but I know mentally the startup is with you 24/7 and that alone can be quite draining.

benmathes 15y ago

Startups are marathons, not sprints; It's about making the right decisions most (if not all) of the time when building, hiring, marketing, etc. Fatigue and exhaustion mean bad decisions; There's plenty of research to back this up: http://likesbuildingthings.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-know-many-many-people-out-here-in.html http://likesbuildingthings.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-know-many-... People who are willing to take the risk of founding tend to be workaholics by nature, but you don't need to be a workaholic by nature to be a founder. It's bad for you longterm and it sets a poisonous precedent for your company culture.

dpark 15y ago
I find this metaphor interesting, because in a marathon, you run the entire time. At least if you want to win, or even race competitively. You might not be sprinting, but you're running at a hard pace until the finish line,
- Jach 15y ago
  "What type of runner can run full speed from the very start of the race? That's right. Someone who runs very short distances. But as programmers, we are smarter than that. We just fire the starter pistol again every 100 yards. I don’t know why runners haven't figured that out." --Rich Hickey
  - majelix 15y ago
    Can you expand on that?
    - crntaylor 15y ago
      He's mocking the concept of a 'sprint' [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(scrum)#Sprint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(scrum)#Sprint
- benmathes 15y ago
  Have you heard of an ultrarun before? It's a run that's longer than a marathon, maybe 50 miles, maybe 100 miles. It's all dependent on the local geography. You don't run those at a fast pace, you complete them in like 8-11 hours. Perhaps that's a better metaphor.
  - zachleat 15y ago
    Does this make it safe to assume that neither of the commenters here run marathons?
    - 15y ago

thematt 15y ago

It's definitely possible. I have a full time job, a girlfriend, work out everyday and after all that I still manage to run two startups on the side. It's mostly about cutting out non-value-added activities while at the same time optimizing every free minute you have.

DonnyV 15y ago
Thats not the same. After you have a family things are very different.
- nollidge 15y ago
  Sure, but jxcole wasn't asking about families necessarily, just how much time a startup absorbs.
- stympy 15y ago
  True, but still doable. I have a family, full-time job, and two side startups (5 and 4 years old), but I still manage to work out regularly, spend time with the family, relax a bit, and even sleep. You can do it, you just need to use your time wisely.

swilliams 15y ago

It's possible, but really hard, especially if you have a family. And actually, building a product in your free time isn't that rough; it's supporting it that will consume all of your free time. Think about it, let's say you have a perfectly reasonable 40 hour work week. What would be a good extra amount to put into a side project/startup? 20 hours? Now you're working 60 hours per week, just under an extra 3 hours per night. How long can you keep that up? How much time will that take away from your family? Let's say you stick it through and launch. The questions and support emails roll in. How much of that will eat up your extra 20 hours per week to work on bugs and new features? And will your customers be ok with waiting the extra time while you slog away at your day job? And what happens if that 40 hour/week job goes into crunch mode and goes up to 50 or maybe even more? Doing this isn't necessarily hard in terms of difficulty, but it does take a LOT of time.

WadeF 15y ago

In my experience the actual physical amount of time spent doing something can be pretty ordinary, but the amount of time spent mentally is enormous. When I'm hanging out with friends or my family I'm not 100% there. I'm running over marketing scenarios in my head, trying to figure out how to squash this weird bug, or figuring out whether I should spend time talking with that one investor or not. So no, I don't think it needs to take over all aspects of your life, but I'm not sure you can consciously stop it.

jacobr 15y ago

I also sincerely wonder if it's not possible to just slow down a bit? If there's no parental leave where you live, take time off and then return to your job after 1 year or so, at 80% speed?

bradt 15y ago
I think it would be difficult for Stack Overflow to slow down. In the post, Jeff links to one of his previous blog posts that describes the "running as fast as they can" culture that's been instilled in the company: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/go-that-way-really-fast.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/go-that-way-really-... I can see why he'd take some time off and maybe start another venture that would lend itself to a more laid back culture.

ahoyhere 15y ago

That depends on what you qualify a "startup." My husband and I run a SaaS/infoproduct business which grossed right around $600k last year and we do not work long hours (or even 40 hours/wk). In 2011, we invested heavily in our next product, a new office, a lot of lawyering & tax accountanting (and made a couple rather big (hiring) mistakes with money), so our take-home wasn't glorious, but next year it will be. We: * built the product in a hack day a week or so for 3 mos * worked pretty hard the first year, since we were doing it alongside consulting; but literally there were weeks, and months, where we did nothing, and our business survived & even grew for a time * quit consulting in 2010 (me in Jan, my husband later) To put this in perspective: In late 2009, I had mono, which knocked me out for a few mos. I got better for a while, but then a series of viral infections landed me with chronic fatigue syndrome. Several times since then, I've been incapacitated for 1-3 mos. Now I'm mostly better, but every time I get sick, I'm unable to work for a week or two. I don't make it up by working long hours when I'm well, either. We're talking 20-30 hours a week for me, max. We haven't worked more than a 40-hour work week for more than two weeks at a time in nearly 2 years, and our biz is 3 years old. In short: it's totally doable. Focus on solving a pain people will pay for. Build something simple, which doesn't require a lot of maintenance. Choose customers who aren't needy fuckers. Pick your hours. Example: Our 1st product is a time tracking tool. Unsexy but it's got a run rate of just over $300k/yr now, just over 3 years old. We had 8% growth in revenue month over month from Dec to Jan. Which is totally sexy. And… right now we're on a month-long trip to NZ. I've been working an average of an hour a day because I'm running a course to teach people how to build this kind of biz. (That's in 2-4 hour stretches, not actually 1 hour a day, which would be useless.) My husband hasn't worked at all on this trip except yesterday he had to reset one of our (redundant) servers because of an apparent hardware failure. That'll probably take a couple more hours of his time this week. Sure, we could work more, hit it harder, and probably earn more money. But we're nicely on track for $1.5m in yearly revenue inside of ~2 more years (when I turn 30!) so I figure, why bother? What could we NOT have with $750k/yr of sustainable household income, even if we spent half the gross revenue on overhead (which is ridiculously unlikely)? We already get to touch thousands of people's lives every day. We can already invest in charities and nice things. As Felix Dennis, who's ludicrously rich (in my mind), wrote in his very excellent How To Get Rich: "Ask me what I will give you if you could wave a magic wand and give me my youth back. The answer would be everything I own and everything I will ever own." He says no less than 3 times in his book that if he could go back to his youth and live a different life, he would have spent way, way, way less time accumulating his obscene (hundreds of $mils) riches and more time living. I take him at his word. In short, it's totally possible. You won't believe it if you spend too much time reading HN, however. Or people will tell you that your ambition is too small… and sneer that you run a "lifestyle business." But then, you will have a life, so you can laugh all the way to the bank. NB: I blog about this stuff at http://unicornfree.com http://unicornfree.com in case you're interested.

aledalgrande 15y ago

First of all, you have to really love your startup. Programming all day, then getting home and have to do the same job in the night can be really draining. Second you have to make it profitable as soon as possible, so you can leave your job and at least start contracting 2-3 days per week, leaving full days to work on your startup. Third, the sacrifice depends on the nature of your startup: if it's a no brainer like a management tool and you're a smart programmer, you won't need to get mad. But if it's really techy, then you better find some mate to not get lost in the venture and use up every minute of your free time. That's my experience and what I've seen around the community here.

garrettdimon 15y ago

I may be a little late to the party on this, but it's definitely possible. There are times where regular hours are impossible, but for the most part, it's definitely possible. I agree wholeheartedly with everything Amy has said about their experience with Freckle. In the four years since quitting my day job to freelance and build my app, I've gotten engaged, married, gone on a honeymoon, got a dog, gone to Europe for a week, and had our first child. I also regularly go on vacation and go snowboarding. I've been full-time on Sifter for about half of that time. So I was part-time for about two years, and that was hard work balancing the two, but it wasn't that bad. I just split time between freelancing and building the company. It was stressful at times, but well worth it. In my case these days, as a solo founder, it's a bit involved. I work every day, but for the most part, I still only work 40 hours per week. I work from home and see my wife and daughter all of the time and find time to go to the gym every single day. I take breaks and spend time with them whenever I want, and I just work whenever it fits into the family schedule. The only catch is that it's very hard to stop thinking about work in my downtime, but I think that has as much to do with me and being passionate about work as it does being a business owner. It hasn't been a cakewalk by any means, but it's entirely possible. I've got a slide deck that covers some of the personal side of things if you're interested. (http://bootstrapping.sifterapp.com http://bootstrapping.sifterapp.com)