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>Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of sta

by Permit 14y ago

>Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned priorities? Ultimately, whether or not it was "worth it" will always be decided based on the final outcome of the company coupled with a large dose of hindsight bias. A startup founder who sacrificed relationships to build a successful company will be recognized as having made the correct decision amidst the company of those who couldn't understand his/her vision. A startup founder who fails having sacrificed relationships and friendships will be recognized as foolish and overly ambitious. If you want a story that aspiring founders responded positively to: "How credit card arbitrage funded my first company."[1] fared pretty well on Reddit/HN when it was first written. From the comfort of success it's easy to judge one's decisions as the correct decisions. It's just as easy to condemn the same decisions made by a failed founder. [1]http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-try-this-at-home-how-credit-card-arbitra http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-try-this-at-home-how-credit-c...

Retric 14y ago
That's somewhat dependent on the scope of the 'relationship' and the 'success'. Lose a good marriage with kids for a 5 million exit and plenty of people will say you made the wrong choice. Lose a girlfriend in the same situation and you may be the only one to regret it.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
Regardless of whether my business succeeds or fails, if my personal relationships with my wife and kids fail, I am a failure. Personally, I don't care if everybody in the world thinks I succeeded, if those relationships fail, I am a failure. Priorities are important.
- robryan 14y ago
  They are, they are also different for different people. There is no right answer to whether sacrificing person relationships for company success is worth it.
  - cookiecaper 14y ago
    There is a right answer. As some other commenters are saying, there is an objective right and wrong. If someone trusts and commits to you as fully as they do when they marry you (or common law marry by prolonged cohabitation), there is absolutely no excuse to damage that trust and that love for a selfish satisfaction of running a successful startup. When you enter that type of relationship with someone, you commit, at the very least implicitly, to make your SO the primary priority in your life. If you want to run a startup, you have to work it around your relationship and not vice-versa. The amount of pain that's inflicted on many different people when a relationship that has all the trappings of permanence, lacking only the discipline of the participants to enforce that permanence, is extreme, and far worse and farther reaching than having a company fail or losing a bunch of investor money. I understand that over the last several decades, individual "fulfillment" (aka undisciplined selfishness) has become the primary attainment for people, regardless of any social structure or moral definition. Marriage has been nullified and diminished to the point where most youth don't even see a point in it anymore. People have been taught, essentially, to worship themselves -- to put temporary individual interests above permanent social cohesion and the good of the whole, and really, the long-term interests of the individual as well. But that doesn't make this correct, and it definitely doesn't make a valid excuse to betray the trust of those closest to you -- triple especially if children are involved. True familial love is worth more than all the money in the world could purchase, including the money your startup may or may not generate, and this is an objective reality.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]

by Permit 14y ago

Retric 14y ago

That's somewhat dependent on the scope of the 'relationship' and the 'success'. Lose a good marriage with kids for a 5 million exit and plenty of people will say you made the wrong choice. Lose a girlfriend in the same situation and you may be the only one to regret it.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

Regardless of whether my business succeeds or fails, if my personal relationships with my wife and kids fail, I am a failure. Personally, I don't care if everybody in the world thinks I succeeded, if those relationships fail, I am a failure. Priorities are important.

robryan 14y ago
They are, they are also different for different people. There is no right answer to whether sacrificing person relationships for company success is worth it.
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  There is a right answer. As some other commenters are saying, there is an objective right and wrong. If someone trusts and commits to you as fully as they do when they marry you (or common law marry by prolonged cohabitation), there is absolutely no excuse to damage that trust and that love for a selfish satisfaction of running a successful startup. When you enter that type of relationship with someone, you commit, at the very least implicitly, to make your SO the primary priority in your life. If you want to run a startup, you have to work it around your relationship and not vice-versa. The amount of pain that's inflicted on many different people when a relationship that has all the trappings of permanence, lacking only the discipline of the participants to enforce that permanence, is extreme, and far worse and farther reaching than having a company fail or losing a bunch of investor money. I understand that over the last several decades, individual "fulfillment" (aka undisciplined selfishness) has become the primary attainment for people, regardless of any social structure or moral definition. Marriage has been nullified and diminished to the point where most youth don't even see a point in it anymore. People have been taught, essentially, to worship themselves -- to put temporary individual interests above permanent social cohesion and the good of the whole, and really, the long-term interests of the individual as well. But that doesn't make this correct, and it definitely doesn't make a valid excuse to betray the trust of those closest to you -- triple especially if children are involved. True familial love is worth more than all the money in the world could purchase, including the money your startup may or may not generate, and this is an objective reality.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]