11 ms·

Y Combinator, a Two-Year-Old, and a Pregnant Wife

288 points by tadmilbourn 12y ago

imranq 12y ago
For some reason there is this myth propagating across SV that less sleep = more productivity... the fact is that if you get half the sleep you are supposed to, your work is not going to be 1/2 as good. It is going to be 1/100ths as good. Not a great position to have your "life's work" in. That said, I admire this guy and his tenacity to work hard and smart. As you can tell, I read a lot of DHH's stuff :), particularly this talk: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2351 http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2351
tadmilbourn 12y ago
My thoughts on ways to balance the needs of a growing startup with the needs of a growing family. Would love to know what others in similar situations have tried. What's worked? What hasn't?
aresant 12y ago
I love articles on this topic because they're uplifting and hopeful, I hate them because they are unrealistic. Y-Combinator's expectation for start-ups is that they are to be "all-consuming" (1) From Sam Altman's "Before the Startup": "If you start a startup, it will take over your life to a degree you cannot imagine. And if your startup succeeds, it will take over your life for a long time: for several years at the very least, maybe for a decade, maybe for the rest of your working life. So there is a real opportunity cost here." In my personal experience start-ups are terrible for young families. If you expect to have a balanced-family-life and still also out-work / out-hustle 20-year olds or 40+ year olds (older kids) that are out for your blood you are setting yourself up for failure. I've been through this exact grind with young children born 18-months apart and you are FORCED to choose. That uninterruptable family dinner? Wait until an investor flys in to SFO unexpectedly and wants to go out on the town. Being around for more of the "little things”? Wait until you are forced to marginalize the importance of being there on your kid's actual "birthday" because heck, you'll be at the birthday party this weekend and you need to be in Dallas for a sales meeting. I am writing those two anecdotes from my own personal experience. Working up on start-up #XX with plenty of success under my belt, pre-set expectations that I'm going to do this "balance" now, etc. It's unrealistic, and I have been forced to choose my start-up and my team over my family to succeed, and it sucks. But that's my path, and that of many others here. I have incredible respect for anybody juggling y-combinator, a working spouse, and two kids. But you have to be made of steel to undertake this path and look at the sacrifices you will make as a husband and father in the eye. (1) http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html
- tadmilbourn 12y ago
  That's the struggle. And, you've called it out precisely. There will be some extremely tough choices. Hopefully it doesn't come to a choice where the business is at risk due to a family decision (or vice versa). But, you've got to stay mindful of that fact. That's why I liked the juggling "Rubber" or "Glass" balls metaphor from my previous CEO.
  - aresant 12y ago
    I get it. And my experience is my own. As others have said in this thread "I could have made other choices" But when you are way down the river, playing with other people's money, and with dozens of employees counting on you these "choices" starts feeling like foregone conclusions. If you want to be a start-up guy, if you want to build a large business, prepare yourself for the realities that are going to come with that. I have been lucky enough to change my situation over the past 2-years, but there would be no business today to "hire sales guys" etc if I hadn't done the work myself when it counted.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  The examples you gave were your choices. They weren't "shit the server's gone down" moments. You could have said you were busy that day to either of them. For the 2nd one you even could have hired another sales guy and you wouldn't have even been in that situation. But you didn't. And in the end, this guy's got a time tracking/invoicing app he sells to small businesses, his scenario is completely different. I don't want to be too dismissive, but it seems more suited for the Amy Hoy/patio11 route rather than the YC one, it's not a pants on fire, runaway scaling startup.
  - tadmilbourn 12y ago
    You're right. Those were my choices. Fortunately, over the past few months, the servers have stayed up and my daughter hasn't had a need to go to the hospital. Those are holy shit moments. But most of life is lived in a more mundane day-to-day way. Those days are filled with your choices about where and how you spend your time. I wrote this post to detail how I go about making these decisions because I know there are others out there in a similar position. Just hearing another perspective is helpful. Someone just pointed me to this post from Change.org's COO and I greatly appreciated her take: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141022041002-407452-work-life-balance-is-bull https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141022041002-407452... On the scalable startup or not...we wouldn't have gotten into YC if we didn't have a plan.
CodeJackalope 12y ago
I went through this journey with Tad. Not having a kid myself it's been amazing to learn about the demands of starting a family while simultaneously getting overwhelmed by the challenges of a growing startup. As Tad mentioned communication has definitely been the key. And often situations where Tad or Kyle's parenting demands seemed like an inconvenience to Tiempo have actually helped remind us all why we are doing this crazy adventure. And we come back swinging even harder the next day. So kudos to all you startup parents out there. It's a tough road but I'm confident you and your family are going to come out stronger for the journey!
ewiu77 12y ago
So Author decides to fully enjoy sex life and now complain how hard life is with kid and pregnant wife ? I mean , he literally decided to have sex with her. No one has forced you to start the startup. There are millions of job with $70k to $80k salary range. Its literally rat race to make quick buck and hit high , encash , fuck users and then don't care. Seriously , STFU. If you really want to see hard life go to Africa, India, Pakistan where people travel 10 km for water.
- tadmilbourn 12y ago
  No one forced me to do a startup. No one forced me to have a kid. Those were my choices. And as a result, I'm in a situation that requires a lot of compromise. I think there are many others in this situation, but it doesn't get talked about all that often. My intent with the post was to share the things I've learned that have helped in the hope that they'll help others. I'm not complaining about my life. In fact, I'm quite happy. Very happy. But that doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't share my decision making process for others to potentially benefit.
dominotw 12y ago
What is this strange bizarre heroism around having kids? I don't get what the big deal is. People have been reproducing for thousands of years without writing self eulogizing blogs about how heroic they are. Have kids if you want to or don't, you are not some kind of martyr for reproducing. I've seen women who go to do hard labor in rice fields the following day of giving birth, its business as usual.
- solipsism 12y ago
  The blog post is hardly self-eulogizing. It's written as advice to other people who are going to try to do two non-trivial things at once and maintain a balance. You decide to pick on only one of the hard things, act as if the writer only mentioned that one thing, and then act as if the writer asked for praise for doing the one hard thing. Did you read a different blog post?
- danieldk 12y ago
  I've seen women who go to do hard labor in rice fields the following day of giving birth, its business as usual. And heroic. We have a baby, but I can't imagine the pain my wife had to go through. Even if it happens to a substantial part of the population, it's still heroic.
  - general_failure 12y ago
    Well, there's a point at which the word 'hero' won't make sense anymore if you use it this way. Not having kids is a heroic thing to do since it's quite a brave decision not knowing how the older you thinks. Leaving kids and working all the time is heroic because you are keeping many people in your company employed and you are selflessly working for their happiness. Taking care of kids and not working is heroic because you said screw you to the corporate world. And so on. See my point? It becomes like everyone is 'special'.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  What is this strange bizarre heroism around founding companies? I don't get what the big deal is. People have been doing business at least since we've had a market economy, centuries at least if not millenia, without writing self-eulogizing blogs about how heroic they are. Found a company if you want or don't, you are not some kind of martyr for going into business. When you look at it from a distance, everything we do is meaningless. People have done things like it before, people will do things that eclipse it in the future, and there is some person out there who will shit on you for doing it. That doesn't mean that it isn't meaningful up close, to some segment of the population going through similar struggles. The fact that this story is #2 on HN right now is indication that some segment of the readership here found it interesting, even if you didn't.
dirtyaura 12y ago
Do you have more blog posts about Tiempo on the site? The site doesn't offer a link to a blog. I'd love to read how you guys are doing business-wise as we are doing something related but tangential.
- tadmilbourn 12y ago
  There are others that I've written up that I'm transferring over. Some were on Medium. Experimenting with different publishing platforms to figure out how best to engage our audience. I'll wire up connections to other articles. In the meantime: http://www.tiempoapp.com/how-minimum-is-viable http://www.tiempoapp.com/how-minimum-is-viable http://www.tiempoapp.com/tiempo-blog-how-we-got-this-freelancer-paid-in-less-than-an-hour http://www.tiempoapp.com/tiempo-blog-how-we-got-this-freelan... http://www.tiempoapp.com/tiempo-blog-the-surprising-power-of-a-thumbs-up http://www.tiempoapp.com/tiempo-blog-the-surprising-power-of...
  - junto 12y ago
    I just followed some of these links back to your website. Just a bit of feedback for you which I hope is useful! I'm on a mobile device and when I try and look at the screenshots on the app they keep moving. They are impossible to look at properly. It's like trying to nail jelly to the wall. Maybe a simple image slider would be better? As a father of two children I found your article interesting. For the moment I have decided that I would prefer to stay contracting in the enterprise on extremely fixed working hours rather than try the start up route. It is a personal decision and each of us needs to make our own choices. My choices are about having a lifestyle that is comfortable and secure but where my career is mediocre. I know that and I accept it.
ryanSrich 12y ago
Interesting article. I guess I don't quite connect with it because I feel like the challenge, by far and away, would be financial, not social. Living with someone and being married to them requires an intimate understanding of who they are as a person. Being able to work through those hard times is something I can do. Being able to make the hard decisions is something I can do. Being able to go without a salary for 4 years, own a house, provide for a family, and work on a startup is something I couldn't do. In fact no one talks about this. I suspect many founders are either: a. working on their second startup and have a huge bank account full of cash from a pervious exit b. come from an extremely wealthy family where money has no effect on their decisions c. are in fact paying themselves a salary (and hiding it from investors?) d. have a significant other that can support the entire family
- tadmilbourn 12y ago
  Very good points. Part of why I was able to make the "startup leap" is because my wife and I both worked at Intuit for 7.5 years. We established a good amount of savings that allows us to not have to worry so much about things like the cost of daycare/diapers/etc. If the finances were tighter, that would add another level of stress to the equation.
  - ryanSrich 12y ago
    Awesome. Thanks for responding. I guess my assumptions of YC founders are that they are 20-something college dropouts with no previous work experience. Thanks for proving me wrong. This gives me hope that my 25 year old self still has time left :)
    - tadmilbourn 12y ago
      I'm 31! You're not over the hill yet :-). In fact, our whole founding team was 30 and married. There are many different configurations for starting a company. My advice is to take whatever your situation is...and use it to your advantage.
  - declan 12y ago
DigitalSea 12y ago
In a few short months I am about to become a dad myself, our first child. I am currently trying to get a startup off of the ground and it is refreshing to read other people have, can and currently are doing it. Based on what I read, it seems Tad has his head screwed on. Missing the wanky networking events, hackathons and realising that it is a fallacy the more hours you put in, the more work you get out. This has been proven time and time again, we are all human and we all have that point where our brains switch off and stop absorbing information. Putting in excessive hours does not give you any kind of advantage, when people are happy and refreshed, they are productive. How many times have you stayed back working on a complex problem, only to go home late without solving the problem, to come in the following morning and fix the issue in 15 minutes? It has happened to me more times over the years than I could count. I have had numerous chats with my wife about how it will all work. She does not work in tech and will be a stay at home mother, but we have already laid the groundwork for how things will work. I want to be there for my child, a child is forever, a startup has such a small chance of succeeding long-term. Setting boundaries and being there for dinners and night time tuck-ins are essential to a happy family. For me, the weekdays will be for work and startup life with a set boundary of a couple of hours for dinner and after for spending time with my child. The weekends will be mostly off limits to spend time going out and doing fun family stuff, picnics, going to the pool, arts/crafts, watching movies and spending quality time with my family. Make your time count, do not let your children grow up remembering you as always being on the computer, especially if your startup ambitions pass you by, all you have left is your family. Weekdays should be for work, not weekends. The challenges my wife and I will face drastically differ from those that Tad and his wife experience on a daily basis, but I think the core principles of being there for your children regardless of your arrangement are universally important for any would-be entrepreneur, small business owner or startup founder to remember. We live in a technology enabled world so much so, even when you step away from a computer screen, your smartphone is just within arms reach and it can be all too easy to open up your email and get just as absorbed in work as you can on a computer. It can be incredibly hard to turn off work mode and relish the time you have for the more important and rewarding things in life. I think incubators like Y Combinator should honestly do more to encourage healthy family life in the land of startups. Instead of pushing founders to drive themselves and their teams into the ground to get a paltry $50k or whatever, the culture needs to be changed at the root of the source. This fallacy that you need to invest 19+ hours a day into a startup early on to succeed is unhealthy. I do not know where it originated from, but I know that it has not always been like this. When entrepreneurs in the 40's and 50's were starting businesses, I know for a fact most people were not investing 19 hours a day into their ideas, technology seems to have removed not only barriers, but also boundaries and morals as well. There is not one single definitive way to run and operate a startup. We are all different, but because of an accepted culture of overtime perpetuated in the late 80's and 90's especially, everyone in the tech industry has mostly come to accept that overtime is a way of life and to succeed you need to put in excessive and unrealistic hours. It is time to change the tide. I think the one takeaway from this article everyone should take, even if you are not trying to run a startup or business, is to make time for the ones that need you the most. When all is said and done, family is the only constant you will have in your life. Jobs come and go, startups fail and succeed and friends come and go, family are always there. This means instead of going to after work drinks or accepting a culture of overtime in your current workplace, knowing when to draw the line and put what matters first, first: family. Not only family, but ensuring that you see friends, go and do activities like visit a theme park, go to the zoo or even a short hike through your local park. Remind yourself when time and priorities permit that there is more to life than work. Great article.
aepearson 12y ago
As a father of two - articles like this come off as incredibly pretentious and I have a really hard time even finishing them. I feel like so many in the "startup" culture are completely trapped in an imaginary bubble that literally means jack shit to anyone outside it. You aren't changing the world out there...you're building business. You are a father and a husband making a conscious adult decision to put work over your family...writing this little "how-to" article does not somehow make you immune to that reality. Venting your elitist self-serving views to the general public does not make you any less irresponsible, much less some sort of "leader". "From 5:30pm-8:30pm, I’m not a startup CEO. I’m a dad." <- That statement right there pretty much illustrates my point. No amount of money will ever replace what you're missing out on at home - I guess you'll have to figure that out on your own though. Hopefully your wife and children will give you back the same 1/8th of their time and focus that you give them.
- martinald 12y ago
  I agree. That was an incredibly hard thing to read. I'm sure he will end up paying a fortune in therapy and rehab bills for his kids.
  - prawn 12y ago
    What a rude and judgemental thing to say. I am in a similar position to the author, only with a small business in place of a startup, and my lifestyle is hardly different. If you have a day job and a young child, you are typically not going to see your child weekdays outside of 7-8am and 6-8pm. This would be a normal situation for almost everyone in a 9-5ish job and with a commute.
- tadmilbourn 12y ago
  It's interesting that others in the thread have implied that I'm not spending enough time on my startup and will be out-hustled. My wife and I both work. So, we have our kid in daycare. 5:30-8:30 is actually 100% of the time from daycare pickup until she goes to sleep. If she doesn't go to sleep until 9:30, then that means I'm with her until then. On the weekends, I work while she naps or is having one on one time with her mom. My point is that I'm spending as close to 100% of the hours I have with my kid. I grew up in Green Bay, WI (about as non-bubble as you can get) with a dad who worked nights. Once I was in school, I'd see him at dinners only. But he made every soccer game I was in. He had to make choices between his career and his family. And I think he did an excellent job of it. His time with me, though less than my mom's, was always attentive. We have a great relationship. I think he made the right choices for our family. This isn't just a Valley issue...I just happen to be in the Valley. Many parents struggle with how to make the tradeoffs between work and family. My hope in sharing my situation is that others can get another perspective and maybe take away a thing or two to try.
foobarian 12y ago
Every now and then you see young people be advised to do X "now, before they have a wife/family/mortgage." X can be a startup, getting a PhD, trip around the world, etc. My view is that doing things differently is biting off more than one can chew and is selfish. Having done a brutal Ph.D. I cannot begin to imagine having had a child at the same time, and the irreversible damage to the kid / opportunity loss / regret that would have resulted in. Of course if you can make it work and live with yourself, more power to you. :)
scald 12y ago
I can relate. My wife and 2 toddlers were 12 hours away for 4 months while I did an accelerator this Summer. I saw them about a week a month. Guys like us are in the minority. A lot of people told me I'm nuts for putting my family on the back burner to chase this dream. I told myself I wasn't going to let work come ahead of them, but yeah, I put them on the back burner for 4 months. At times it felt nuts. My kids are growing up fast and I'm working 18 hours a day across the country. Some days, it took immense amounts of willpower to not jump on a plane and dip out. I used the military analogy with my wife when she complained. Hell, how many guys went over to Afghanistan for months without seeing their families? A lot of them never came back. A ton more risk, for what? Priority boarding and discounts on oil changes? (I have a ton of respect for those guys, and no, they don't do it for perks or respect.) Compared to that, I'd say the upside of this opportunity is what they call once in a lifetime. But in reality, a lot of those folks didn't really have better options. I could make a good living as a developer if I wanted to. If I'm honest, doing this startup thing with a family requires me to be pretty selfish most of the time. But selfish in a good, weird way - working 80 hours a week so someday I don't have to work 40, so I can take my wife and kids to Hawaii for the summer someday, or whatever. Luckily for us, the experience of the accelerator was worth every pain point. It probably only gets harder from here. Now I'm back with the family, with a (soon to be) funded company, and will have to make those tough juggling decisions on a daily basis. It's all about finding boundaries and balance. Off to pick my kids up from daycare...
- Snail_Commando 12y ago
  > But selfish in a good, weird way - working 80 hours a week so someday I don't have to work 40, so I can take my wife and kids to Hawaii for the summer someday, or whatever. Epochs are not fungible, especially when raising children. Missing a toddler play at the beach for the first time cannot be reclaimed by sharing their first scuba lesson.
  - abfan1127 12y ago
    I disagree with the "firsts" argument. Trying to be there for the firsts of everything is silly and clinging to them is even sillier. Its area under the curve, height and width matter.
belorn 12y ago
Interesting to see two articles on the same subject posted with about a week between, one about being a "mom" in Y Combinator (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8456258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8456258), and this one about being a "dad" in Y Combinator.
- tadmilbourn 12y ago
  Susan is awesome (she's a batch mate)! And made a hugely difficult decision with her LA to SF commute. I was working on an outline for this post two weeks ago then I saw Susan's post hit and I thought two things: 1) People are very interested in this topic and 2) I should probably hold off on my post for a week :-)
ryanmarsh 12y ago
I'd love to know how he paid his mortgage while in YC. We're a single income family. My co-founder is single and his financial liabilities are nearly zero (he's a minimalist) so he could make it work. Do you just burn savings? Lastly, what if you lost all of your savings in your previous startup? asking for a friend ;)
- tadmilbourn 12y ago
  Hehe...well, I'd tell your "friend" to build up some savings. My wife and I both had very nice jobs at Intuit for 7.5 years (she's now at a new company). That allowed us to build a nice nest egg. Instead of spending that on a down payment for a house, it's now the cushion that allows us to do it. So, not having a mortgage to pay helps :-) Living within your means to build up some savings also helps. I wouldn't have been able to do this if we hadn't done those things. Which is why I'm a 31-year-old doing a startup instead of fresh out of college.
  - mrkurt 12y ago
    The savings are key. It took us a concerted 3 years to save up enough, and we were frugal. It took a great deal of luck for that three years' worth of savings to be enough.
  - ryandrake 12y ago
    Seems kind of unrealistic, at least given the cost of living in the Bay Area. Even if you're able to put away, say $1000 a month for 10 years, for a family of four, that's about two years of very frugal living expenses. Oh, and you have to fund the business too. Congratulations to you that you managed to do it though!
    - nostrademons 12y ago
      $1000/month is pretty low savings for someone who works in tech in the Bay Area. It's not unrealistic to put away $10K/month if you hold a senior position at one of the major tech companies (think about it: total comp can easily run $250K+/year, so you're taking home about $160K/year after taxes. Save $120K/year and you still have $40K/year to live on, more than most non-tech workers get). At $10K/month you can save $600K in 5 years, good for about 10 years of living expenses if you're frugal, more if you get good investment returns. It's also not unheard of for tech workers to skip the "found a company" stage entirely and retire off their savings, with F-U money, after 10 years in the field.
Animats 12y ago
Y-Combinator's expectation for start-ups is that they are to be "all-consuming" Yes. If your wife is pregnant, she's expected to have an abortion so she can concentrate on the business.
tytytytytyty 12y ago
http://www.linkedin.com/in/tadmilbourn http://www.linkedin.com/in/tadmilbourn Yet another business graduate in "Computer Software"... sigh... This is why YComb is a damn joke.
- tadmilbourn 12y ago
  That's offensive to me on so many levels. I know some HTML and CSS, but no...I can't code. And I have a business degree. And...oh god...look at that haircut. Run! He might have an MBA (I don't)! Just because I'm "non-technical" doesn't make Y-Combinator irrelevant or inappropriate to me (or for anyone else). If you look at the very LinkedIn profile you link to, you'll see that I've been a product manager at Intuit for nearly 8 years prior to founding Tiempo. I've dealt with creating software that entire time. I've learned how to build teams. I've learned how to build businesses. YC is for people who want to build great companies. I fall firmly into that category. Plus, my cofounders can code. Check out our app if you still don't think we belong (http://www.tiempoapp.com http://www.tiempoapp.com).
  - BigChiefSmokem 12y ago
    Don't mind him, it's a common prejudice most "tech" people have against everyone else. Sometimes, I even catch myself falling into that mentality. I am coming from the opposite direction - very good coder but not a very good business man or graphics designer. I am also a new father. I always appreciate tech industry articles written from a non-"techie" perspective. My life philosophy is to know at least a little bit of everything, so that my solutions in life can be better informed.
stevewepay 12y ago
I'm at a YC startup, and our culture is very much to not have late nights, work people to death, etc. The belief here is that working people to the bone does not build a scalable business, and the only way to grow at a sustainable pace is to maintain regular work hours, have realistic goals in terms of work, and to give people a life outside of work. Sure, we all monitor our emails on our phones, and on occasion we need to work a little extra, this is still Silicon Valley. But many people here have young families, and the office is pretty empty by 6:00pm.
reshambabble 12y ago
One of my favorite things about this article is it's a dad (with a spouse who also works), talking about how important his family is to him and his struggles to have both family and work (AKA "having it all" when some women talk about the same thing). It's refreshing, because it shows that wanting to be both a caregiver and a breadmaker for your family isn't just a women's issue. I wish more articles would come out like this.
lynnah 12y ago
Great topic. So important. I found this book super useful. http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/for-better-or-for-work-a-survival-guide-from-meg-hirshberg/ http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/for-better-or-for-work-a-surv...
lynnah 12y ago
Great topic. So important. I found this book super useful. http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/for-better-or-for-work-a-survival-guide-from-meg-hirshberg/ http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/for-better-or-for-work-a-surv...
stevewilhelm 12y ago
Fast forward four years from now. Parent teacher conferences, AYSO, play dates, music lessons, September flu & strep throat, recitals, Y Adventure Guides, homework, walking the puppy, Gilroy Gardens... Balance that with board meeting prep, sales road trips, recruiting, fund raising, OKRs, product reviews, hack-a-thons, conferences... Good luck my friend.
- mrkurt 12y ago
  Still doable. It doesn't seem to get absolutely more busy, because they will also be in school for many hours a week four years from now. And they still sleep more than adults.
- yesimahuman 12y ago
  If that's your full time job, then how is it different from any other career? The thing people don't realize here is time spent doesn't actually mean anything. If you are just "hustling" all day it doesn't mean you are making progress. It's a false badge of honor. Also, these responsibilities force you to learn how to delegate. If you are doing everything yourself and not enabling your team to share the work and add their touch you are doing it wrong. I'd rather work with a balanced founder than one consistently on the edge of burnout and insanity.
comlonq 12y ago
Jesus christ man - all of this sacrifice for a time sheet application? Is it really worth it?
simi_ 12y ago
I read the title and realise I'm in the exact same situation: I have a wife, a 2nd year-old son, and my wife is 5 months pregnant. And tomorrow my startup finds out whether we got into YC W15!
JoseVigil 12y ago
I am married with a seven years old beautiful boy. The hardest part for me during these years of entrepreneurship have been the hassle of not giving enough financial resources to my family and instead putting money blindly into the company and project. In an "early" stage is likely and inevitable waste and mislead of money without exception. That, in my opinion is the hardest part of all aside from the time spent and the amount of love given mentioned. Personal elections and freedom of choice is cool but when the live style of your family is affected turns cumbersome and contradictory. I can tell a lot about that. Furthermore if the project fails, most of the time do, that money is gone and gone for the family too. Of course we all know that the experience pays off and the longer term economy will be much better, but at last. During the journey, your mind plays tricks that opposes completely to a family type of thinking of saving and caring about moving money to and for the family. Thats life, and part of the freedom of being moved by dreams and vision.
chuckcode 12y ago
I'm surprised about the number of judgemental posts and lack of real world approaches to help manage a classic resource allocation problem. We are all balancing priorities where we want to spend our time (and high quality time) between work, friends, family, hobbies etc. We can choose to do fewer things and we can try to be more efficient in the things we choose to do. What are approaches that HN has found useful to help do either? Personally I like some of Tad's approaches to set expectations and balance two things that are obviously very important to him. Shared google calendar and asana todo lists can certainly help communication with family and work but I haven't found anything that substitutes for spending 1:1 time with the toddler...
karlaugsten 12y ago
I cant help but think of Erlich Bachman's 'Aviato' when I hear 'Tiempo'.
- BigChiefSmokem 12y ago
  Which Elrich sold for a ton of money... like Steve. Anyways, 'Tiempo' means 'time' in Spanish.
idlewords 12y ago
"One advantage startups have over established companies is that there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. For example, I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children, or was likely to have them soon." - Paul Graham
- hawkice 12y ago
  It's surprising to me how seriously this is taken. Not many people would identify anti-workplace-discrimination laws as burdensome regulation. Most people (at least among the intelligensia) would just not discriminate and be done with it. The odd thing is, Graham doesn't appear to be even suggesting a criticism of any cover-your-ass bookkeeping, and he doesn't appear to say the regulation isn't the best tool to achieve equality, or any other more nuanced critique that may or may not end up having merit. He's suggesting that discrimination is good.
nkozyra 12y ago
One of the biggest misconception in the startup world is that there is a 1:1 relationship with the unquantifiable "hustle" and time spent in front of a computer. Long story short from me: a few years back my company was courted by one of the big guys. We had a staff of four and immediately thought "this is it." They asked a lot of us in this "discovery" process, and I was routinely working 18 hour days, and my productivity dipped further with each day. As I clamored to work more and therefore "get more done," I ended up getting less done than ever. The deal fell through but not due to not coming through for them. Fast forward to last year when my wife and I had our first kid. It's an immediate hit to your flexibility. For the first few months I felt helpless, I wanted to work all day long but I was exhausted. The more I tried to sneak work in, the less I got done, the grumpier I was and the less time I enjoyed with my family. It took months, but I realized that productivity in limited time is about efficiency and delegation. It's about finding what time-consuming responsibilities can be handled by others (either through charity or payment), it's about reducing recreation (or scheduling it for a certain time). I spend less time working now than I did when "hustling," but I get more done. When I sit down in the morning it is time to go. I don't check Facebook when I work. I don't go out to lunch, unless I'm meeting someone. Hustling is about effort, not time invested. Don't fall into the trap that says you can't beat someone with more time to spend on something, you just have to work that much smarter. It's a mistake to call it "balance," it's really about efficiency. Don't waste your time with your family and don't waste your time with your company - and finally: know that most people do waste time.
curiousDog 12y ago
As someone who is single and works as a programmer at a Big 4 and still struggles to make time for social life, would be nic e to see a write-up like this from an engineer. From what I've experienced, if you're coding day-day on high pressure projects, keeping tight-schedules like this is damn near impossible.
bernardlunn 12y ago
Beautifully articulated and I believe that the balance is hard but possible. It is of course easier to succeed in business if you ignore your family (and your health and your sanity), but that would certainly be a Pyrrhic victory.
Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
The thing which I always see missing from these descriptions is the persons other half. The usual logic runs - from 8am to 6pm I'm at work. From 6pm to 8.30pm I'm dad (or mum but realistically it's usually Dad). Once the kids are back in bed I get back on to e-mail, catch up with what I've missed and start planning the next day. That's great - you've covered work and your kids/family as a whole, but where are you fitting in time just as a couple? I'm not talking about weekends away or big nights out (though those are tough enough), I'm talking about just fitting in time to talk and catch up and remember why (and indeed that) you like each other. For me that's the toughest one. You or your other half can find time on your own - that's easy, the other one takes the kids. Time as a family is always a default for any spare time because guilt drives you towards your kids. The tough one is time as a couple because it's the one that by default comes after everything else and is therefore the first one to get squeezed.

288 points by tadmilbourn 12y ago

For some reason there is this myth propagating across SV that less sleep = more productivity... the fact is that if you get half the sleep you are supposed to, your work is not going to be 1/2 as good. It is going to be 1/100ths as good. Not a great position to have your "life's work" in. That said, I admire this guy and his tenacity to work hard and smart. As you can tell, I read a lot of DHH's stuff :), particularly this talk: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2351 http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2351

tadmilbourn 12y ago

My thoughts on ways to balance the needs of a growing startup with the needs of a growing family. Would love to know what others in similar situations have tried. What's worked? What hasn't?

aresant 12y ago

I love articles on this topic because they're uplifting and hopeful, I hate them because they are unrealistic. Y-Combinator's expectation for start-ups is that they are to be "all-consuming" (1) From Sam Altman's "Before the Startup": "If you start a startup, it will take over your life to a degree you cannot imagine. And if your startup succeeds, it will take over your life for a long time: for several years at the very least, maybe for a decade, maybe for the rest of your working life. So there is a real opportunity cost here." In my personal experience start-ups are terrible for young families. If you expect to have a balanced-family-life and still also out-work / out-hustle 20-year olds or 40+ year olds (older kids) that are out for your blood you are setting yourself up for failure. I've been through this exact grind with young children born 18-months apart and you are FORCED to choose. That uninterruptable family dinner? Wait until an investor flys in to SFO unexpectedly and wants to go out on the town. Being around for more of the "little things”? Wait until you are forced to marginalize the importance of being there on your kid's actual "birthday" because heck, you'll be at the birthday party this weekend and you need to be in Dallas for a sales meeting. I am writing those two anecdotes from my own personal experience. Working up on start-up #XX with plenty of success under my belt, pre-set expectations that I'm going to do this "balance" now, etc. It's unrealistic, and I have been forced to choose my start-up and my team over my family to succeed, and it sucks. But that's my path, and that of many others here. I have incredible respect for anybody juggling y-combinator, a working spouse, and two kids. But you have to be made of steel to undertake this path and look at the sacrifices you will make as a husband and father in the eye. (1) http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html

tadmilbourn 12y ago
That's the struggle. And, you've called it out precisely. There will be some extremely tough choices. Hopefully it doesn't come to a choice where the business is at risk due to a family decision (or vice versa). But, you've got to stay mindful of that fact. That's why I liked the juggling "Rubber" or "Glass" balls metaphor from my previous CEO.
- aresant 12y ago
  I get it. And my experience is my own. As others have said in this thread "I could have made other choices" But when you are way down the river, playing with other people's money, and with dozens of employees counting on you these "choices" starts feeling like foregone conclusions. If you want to be a start-up guy, if you want to build a large business, prepare yourself for the realities that are going to come with that. I have been lucky enough to change my situation over the past 2-years, but there would be no business today to "hire sales guys" etc if I hadn't done the work myself when it counted.
mattmanser 12y ago
The examples you gave were your choices. They weren't "shit the server's gone down" moments. You could have said you were busy that day to either of them. For the 2nd one you even could have hired another sales guy and you wouldn't have even been in that situation. But you didn't. And in the end, this guy's got a time tracking/invoicing app he sells to small businesses, his scenario is completely different. I don't want to be too dismissive, but it seems more suited for the Amy Hoy/patio11 route rather than the YC one, it's not a pants on fire, runaway scaling startup.
- tadmilbourn 12y ago
  You're right. Those were my choices. Fortunately, over the past few months, the servers have stayed up and my daughter hasn't had a need to go to the hospital. Those are holy shit moments. But most of life is lived in a more mundane day-to-day way. Those days are filled with your choices about where and how you spend your time. I wrote this post to detail how I go about making these decisions because I know there are others out there in a similar position. Just hearing another perspective is helpful. Someone just pointed me to this post from Change.org's COO and I greatly appreciated her take: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141022041002-407452-work-life-balance-is-bull https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141022041002-407452... On the scalable startup or not...we wouldn't have gotten into YC if we didn't have a plan.

CodeJackalope 12y ago

I went through this journey with Tad. Not having a kid myself it's been amazing to learn about the demands of starting a family while simultaneously getting overwhelmed by the challenges of a growing startup. As Tad mentioned communication has definitely been the key. And often situations where Tad or Kyle's parenting demands seemed like an inconvenience to Tiempo have actually helped remind us all why we are doing this crazy adventure. And we come back swinging even harder the next day. So kudos to all you startup parents out there. It's a tough road but I'm confident you and your family are going to come out stronger for the journey!

ewiu77 12y ago

So Author decides to fully enjoy sex life and now complain how hard life is with kid and pregnant wife ? I mean , he literally decided to have sex with her. No one has forced you to start the startup. There are millions of job with $70k to $80k salary range. Its literally rat race to make quick buck and hit high , encash , fuck users and then don't care. Seriously , STFU. If you really want to see hard life go to Africa, India, Pakistan where people travel 10 km for water.

tadmilbourn 12y ago
No one forced me to do a startup. No one forced me to have a kid. Those were my choices. And as a result, I'm in a situation that requires a lot of compromise. I think there are many others in this situation, but it doesn't get talked about all that often. My intent with the post was to share the things I've learned that have helped in the hope that they'll help others. I'm not complaining about my life. In fact, I'm quite happy. Very happy. But that doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't share my decision making process for others to potentially benefit.

dominotw 12y ago

What is this strange bizarre heroism around having kids? I don't get what the big deal is. People have been reproducing for thousands of years without writing self eulogizing blogs about how heroic they are. Have kids if you want to or don't, you are not some kind of martyr for reproducing. I've seen women who go to do hard labor in rice fields the following day of giving birth, its business as usual.

solipsism 12y ago
The blog post is hardly self-eulogizing. It's written as advice to other people who are going to try to do two non-trivial things at once and maintain a balance. You decide to pick on only one of the hard things, act as if the writer only mentioned that one thing, and then act as if the writer asked for praise for doing the one hard thing. Did you read a different blog post?
danieldk 12y ago
I've seen women who go to do hard labor in rice fields the following day of giving birth, its business as usual. And heroic. We have a baby, but I can't imagine the pain my wife had to go through. Even if it happens to a substantial part of the population, it's still heroic.
- general_failure 12y ago
  Well, there's a point at which the word 'hero' won't make sense anymore if you use it this way. Not having kids is a heroic thing to do since it's quite a brave decision not knowing how the older you thinks. Leaving kids and working all the time is heroic because you are keeping many people in your company employed and you are selflessly working for their happiness. Taking care of kids and not working is heroic because you said screw you to the corporate world. And so on. See my point? It becomes like everyone is 'special'.
nostrademons 12y ago
What is this strange bizarre heroism around founding companies? I don't get what the big deal is. People have been doing business at least since we've had a market economy, centuries at least if not millenia, without writing self-eulogizing blogs about how heroic they are. Found a company if you want or don't, you are not some kind of martyr for going into business. When you look at it from a distance, everything we do is meaningless. People have done things like it before, people will do things that eclipse it in the future, and there is some person out there who will shit on you for doing it. That doesn't mean that it isn't meaningful up close, to some segment of the population going through similar struggles. The fact that this story is #2 on HN right now is indication that some segment of the readership here found it interesting, even if you didn't.

dirtyaura 12y ago

Do you have more blog posts about Tiempo on the site? The site doesn't offer a link to a blog. I'd love to read how you guys are doing business-wise as we are doing something related but tangential.

tadmilbourn 12y ago
There are others that I've written up that I'm transferring over. Some were on Medium. Experimenting with different publishing platforms to figure out how best to engage our audience. I'll wire up connections to other articles. In the meantime: http://www.tiempoapp.com/how-minimum-is-viable http://www.tiempoapp.com/how-minimum-is-viable http://www.tiempoapp.com/tiempo-blog-how-we-got-this-freelancer-paid-in-less-than-an-hour http://www.tiempoapp.com/tiempo-blog-how-we-got-this-freelan... http://www.tiempoapp.com/tiempo-blog-the-surprising-power-of-a-thumbs-up http://www.tiempoapp.com/tiempo-blog-the-surprising-power-of...
- junto 12y ago
  I just followed some of these links back to your website. Just a bit of feedback for you which I hope is useful! I'm on a mobile device and when I try and look at the screenshots on the app they keep moving. They are impossible to look at properly. It's like trying to nail jelly to the wall. Maybe a simple image slider would be better? As a father of two children I found your article interesting. For the moment I have decided that I would prefer to stay contracting in the enterprise on extremely fixed working hours rather than try the start up route. It is a personal decision and each of us needs to make our own choices. My choices are about having a lifestyle that is comfortable and secure but where my career is mediocre. I know that and I accept it.

ryanSrich 12y ago

Interesting article. I guess I don't quite connect with it because I feel like the challenge, by far and away, would be financial, not social. Living with someone and being married to them requires an intimate understanding of who they are as a person. Being able to work through those hard times is something I can do. Being able to make the hard decisions is something I can do. Being able to go without a salary for 4 years, own a house, provide for a family, and work on a startup is something I couldn't do. In fact no one talks about this. I suspect many founders are either: a. working on their second startup and have a huge bank account full of cash from a pervious exit b. come from an extremely wealthy family where money has no effect on their decisions c. are in fact paying themselves a salary (and hiding it from investors?) d. have a significant other that can support the entire family

tadmilbourn 12y ago
Very good points. Part of why I was able to make the "startup leap" is because my wife and I both worked at Intuit for 7.5 years. We established a good amount of savings that allows us to not have to worry so much about things like the cost of daycare/diapers/etc. If the finances were tighter, that would add another level of stress to the equation.
- ryanSrich 12y ago
  Awesome. Thanks for responding. I guess my assumptions of YC founders are that they are 20-something college dropouts with no previous work experience. Thanks for proving me wrong. This gives me hope that my 25 year old self still has time left :)
  - tadmilbourn 12y ago
    I'm 31! You're not over the hill yet :-). In fact, our whole founding team was 30 and married. There are many different configurations for starting a company. My advice is to take whatever your situation is...and use it to your advantage.
- declan 12y ago

DigitalSea 12y ago

In a few short months I am about to become a dad myself, our first child. I am currently trying to get a startup off of the ground and it is refreshing to read other people have, can and currently are doing it. Based on what I read, it seems Tad has his head screwed on. Missing the wanky networking events, hackathons and realising that it is a fallacy the more hours you put in, the more work you get out. This has been proven time and time again, we are all human and we all have that point where our brains switch off and stop absorbing information. Putting in excessive hours does not give you any kind of advantage, when people are happy and refreshed, they are productive. How many times have you stayed back working on a complex problem, only to go home late without solving the problem, to come in the following morning and fix the issue in 15 minutes? It has happened to me more times over the years than I could count. I have had numerous chats with my wife about how it will all work. She does not work in tech and will be a stay at home mother, but we have already laid the groundwork for how things will work. I want to be there for my child, a child is forever, a startup has such a small chance of succeeding long-term. Setting boundaries and being there for dinners and night time tuck-ins are essential to a happy family. For me, the weekdays will be for work and startup life with a set boundary of a couple of hours for dinner and after for spending time with my child. The weekends will be mostly off limits to spend time going out and doing fun family stuff, picnics, going to the pool, arts/crafts, watching movies and spending quality time with my family. Make your time count, do not let your children grow up remembering you as always being on the computer, especially if your startup ambitions pass you by, all you have left is your family. Weekdays should be for work, not weekends. The challenges my wife and I will face drastically differ from those that Tad and his wife experience on a daily basis, but I think the core principles of being there for your children regardless of your arrangement are universally important for any would-be entrepreneur, small business owner or startup founder to remember. We live in a technology enabled world so much so, even when you step away from a computer screen, your smartphone is just within arms reach and it can be all too easy to open up your email and get just as absorbed in work as you can on a computer. It can be incredibly hard to turn off work mode and relish the time you have for the more important and rewarding things in life. I think incubators like Y Combinator should honestly do more to encourage healthy family life in the land of startups. Instead of pushing founders to drive themselves and their teams into the ground to get a paltry $50k or whatever, the culture needs to be changed at the root of the source. This fallacy that you need to invest 19+ hours a day into a startup early on to succeed is unhealthy. I do not know where it originated from, but I know that it has not always been like this. When entrepreneurs in the 40's and 50's were starting businesses, I know for a fact most people were not investing 19 hours a day into their ideas, technology seems to have removed not only barriers, but also boundaries and morals as well. There is not one single definitive way to run and operate a startup. We are all different, but because of an accepted culture of overtime perpetuated in the late 80's and 90's especially, everyone in the tech industry has mostly come to accept that overtime is a way of life and to succeed you need to put in excessive and unrealistic hours. It is time to change the tide. I think the one takeaway from this article everyone should take, even if you are not trying to run a startup or business, is to make time for the ones that need you the most. When all is said and done, family is the only constant you will have in your life. Jobs come and go, startups fail and succeed and friends come and go, family are always there. This means instead of going to after work drinks or accepting a culture of overtime in your current workplace, knowing when to draw the line and put what matters first, first: family. Not only family, but ensuring that you see friends, go and do activities like visit a theme park, go to the zoo or even a short hike through your local park. Remind yourself when time and priorities permit that there is more to life than work. Great article.

aepearson 12y ago

As a father of two - articles like this come off as incredibly pretentious and I have a really hard time even finishing them. I feel like so many in the "startup" culture are completely trapped in an imaginary bubble that literally means jack shit to anyone outside it. You aren't changing the world out there...you're building business. You are a father and a husband making a conscious adult decision to put work over your family...writing this little "how-to" article does not somehow make you immune to that reality. Venting your elitist self-serving views to the general public does not make you any less irresponsible, much less some sort of "leader". "From 5:30pm-8:30pm, I’m not a startup CEO. I’m a dad." <- That statement right there pretty much illustrates my point. No amount of money will ever replace what you're missing out on at home - I guess you'll have to figure that out on your own though. Hopefully your wife and children will give you back the same 1/8th of their time and focus that you give them.

martinald 12y ago
I agree. That was an incredibly hard thing to read. I'm sure he will end up paying a fortune in therapy and rehab bills for his kids.
- prawn 12y ago
  What a rude and judgemental thing to say. I am in a similar position to the author, only with a small business in place of a startup, and my lifestyle is hardly different. If you have a day job and a young child, you are typically not going to see your child weekdays outside of 7-8am and 6-8pm. This would be a normal situation for almost everyone in a 9-5ish job and with a commute.
tadmilbourn 12y ago
It's interesting that others in the thread have implied that I'm not spending enough time on my startup and will be out-hustled. My wife and I both work. So, we have our kid in daycare. 5:30-8:30 is actually 100% of the time from daycare pickup until she goes to sleep. If she doesn't go to sleep until 9:30, then that means I'm with her until then. On the weekends, I work while she naps or is having one on one time with her mom. My point is that I'm spending as close to 100% of the hours I have with my kid. I grew up in Green Bay, WI (about as non-bubble as you can get) with a dad who worked nights. Once I was in school, I'd see him at dinners only. But he made every soccer game I was in. He had to make choices between his career and his family. And I think he did an excellent job of it. His time with me, though less than my mom's, was always attentive. We have a great relationship. I think he made the right choices for our family. This isn't just a Valley issue...I just happen to be in the Valley. Many parents struggle with how to make the tradeoffs between work and family. My hope in sharing my situation is that others can get another perspective and maybe take away a thing or two to try.

foobarian 12y ago

Every now and then you see young people be advised to do X "now, before they have a wife/family/mortgage." X can be a startup, getting a PhD, trip around the world, etc. My view is that doing things differently is biting off more than one can chew and is selfish. Having done a brutal Ph.D. I cannot begin to imagine having had a child at the same time, and the irreversible damage to the kid / opportunity loss / regret that would have resulted in. Of course if you can make it work and live with yourself, more power to you. :)

scald 12y ago

I can relate. My wife and 2 toddlers were 12 hours away for 4 months while I did an accelerator this Summer. I saw them about a week a month. Guys like us are in the minority. A lot of people told me I'm nuts for putting my family on the back burner to chase this dream. I told myself I wasn't going to let work come ahead of them, but yeah, I put them on the back burner for 4 months. At times it felt nuts. My kids are growing up fast and I'm working 18 hours a day across the country. Some days, it took immense amounts of willpower to not jump on a plane and dip out. I used the military analogy with my wife when she complained. Hell, how many guys went over to Afghanistan for months without seeing their families? A lot of them never came back. A ton more risk, for what? Priority boarding and discounts on oil changes? (I have a ton of respect for those guys, and no, they don't do it for perks or respect.) Compared to that, I'd say the upside of this opportunity is what they call once in a lifetime. But in reality, a lot of those folks didn't really have better options. I could make a good living as a developer if I wanted to. If I'm honest, doing this startup thing with a family requires me to be pretty selfish most of the time. But selfish in a good, weird way - working 80 hours a week so someday I don't have to work 40, so I can take my wife and kids to Hawaii for the summer someday, or whatever. Luckily for us, the experience of the accelerator was worth every pain point. It probably only gets harder from here. Now I'm back with the family, with a (soon to be) funded company, and will have to make those tough juggling decisions on a daily basis. It's all about finding boundaries and balance. Off to pick my kids up from daycare...

Snail_Commando 12y ago
> But selfish in a good, weird way - working 80 hours a week so someday I don't have to work 40, so I can take my wife and kids to Hawaii for the summer someday, or whatever. Epochs are not fungible, especially when raising children. Missing a toddler play at the beach for the first time cannot be reclaimed by sharing their first scuba lesson.
- abfan1127 12y ago
  I disagree with the "firsts" argument. Trying to be there for the firsts of everything is silly and clinging to them is even sillier. Its area under the curve, height and width matter.

belorn 12y ago

Interesting to see two articles on the same subject posted with about a week between, one about being a "mom" in Y Combinator (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8456258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8456258), and this one about being a "dad" in Y Combinator.

tadmilbourn 12y ago
Susan is awesome (she's a batch mate)! And made a hugely difficult decision with her LA to SF commute. I was working on an outline for this post two weeks ago then I saw Susan's post hit and I thought two things: 1) People are very interested in this topic and 2) I should probably hold off on my post for a week :-)

ryanmarsh 12y ago

I'd love to know how he paid his mortgage while in YC. We're a single income family. My co-founder is single and his financial liabilities are nearly zero (he's a minimalist) so he could make it work. Do you just burn savings? Lastly, what if you lost all of your savings in your previous startup? asking for a friend ;)

tadmilbourn 12y ago
Hehe...well, I'd tell your "friend" to build up some savings. My wife and I both had very nice jobs at Intuit for 7.5 years (she's now at a new company). That allowed us to build a nice nest egg. Instead of spending that on a down payment for a house, it's now the cushion that allows us to do it. So, not having a mortgage to pay helps :-) Living within your means to build up some savings also helps. I wouldn't have been able to do this if we hadn't done those things. Which is why I'm a 31-year-old doing a startup instead of fresh out of college.
- mrkurt 12y ago
  The savings are key. It took us a concerted 3 years to save up enough, and we were frugal. It took a great deal of luck for that three years' worth of savings to be enough.
- ryandrake 12y ago
  Seems kind of unrealistic, at least given the cost of living in the Bay Area. Even if you're able to put away, say $1000 a month for 10 years, for a family of four, that's about two years of very frugal living expenses. Oh, and you have to fund the business too. Congratulations to you that you managed to do it though!
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    $1000/month is pretty low savings for someone who works in tech in the Bay Area. It's not unrealistic to put away $10K/month if you hold a senior position at one of the major tech companies (think about it: total comp can easily run $250K+/year, so you're taking home about $160K/year after taxes. Save $120K/year and you still have $40K/year to live on, more than most non-tech workers get). At $10K/month you can save $600K in 5 years, good for about 10 years of living expenses if you're frugal, more if you get good investment returns. It's also not unheard of for tech workers to skip the "found a company" stage entirely and retire off their savings, with F-U money, after 10 years in the field.

Animats 12y ago

Y-Combinator's expectation for start-ups is that they are to be "all-consuming" Yes. If your wife is pregnant, she's expected to have an abortion so she can concentrate on the business.

tytytytytyty 12y ago

http://www.linkedin.com/in/tadmilbourn http://www.linkedin.com/in/tadmilbourn Yet another business graduate in "Computer Software"... sigh... This is why YComb is a damn joke.

tadmilbourn 12y ago
That's offensive to me on so many levels. I know some HTML and CSS, but no...I can't code. And I have a business degree. And...oh god...look at that haircut. Run! He might have an MBA (I don't)! Just because I'm "non-technical" doesn't make Y-Combinator irrelevant or inappropriate to me (or for anyone else). If you look at the very LinkedIn profile you link to, you'll see that I've been a product manager at Intuit for nearly 8 years prior to founding Tiempo. I've dealt with creating software that entire time. I've learned how to build teams. I've learned how to build businesses. YC is for people who want to build great companies. I fall firmly into that category. Plus, my cofounders can code. Check out our app if you still don't think we belong (http://www.tiempoapp.com http://www.tiempoapp.com).
- BigChiefSmokem 12y ago
  Don't mind him, it's a common prejudice most "tech" people have against everyone else. Sometimes, I even catch myself falling into that mentality. I am coming from the opposite direction - very good coder but not a very good business man or graphics designer. I am also a new father. I always appreciate tech industry articles written from a non-"techie" perspective. My life philosophy is to know at least a little bit of everything, so that my solutions in life can be better informed.

stevewepay 12y ago

I'm at a YC startup, and our culture is very much to not have late nights, work people to death, etc. The belief here is that working people to the bone does not build a scalable business, and the only way to grow at a sustainable pace is to maintain regular work hours, have realistic goals in terms of work, and to give people a life outside of work. Sure, we all monitor our emails on our phones, and on occasion we need to work a little extra, this is still Silicon Valley. But many people here have young families, and the office is pretty empty by 6:00pm.

reshambabble 12y ago

One of my favorite things about this article is it's a dad (with a spouse who also works), talking about how important his family is to him and his struggles to have both family and work (AKA "having it all" when some women talk about the same thing). It's refreshing, because it shows that wanting to be both a caregiver and a breadmaker for your family isn't just a women's issue. I wish more articles would come out like this.

lynnah 12y ago

Great topic. So important. I found this book super useful. http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/for-better-or-for-work-a-survival-guide-from-meg-hirshberg/ http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/for-better-or-for-work-a-surv...

lynnah 12y ago

stevewilhelm 12y ago

Fast forward four years from now. Parent teacher conferences, AYSO, play dates, music lessons, September flu & strep throat, recitals, Y Adventure Guides, homework, walking the puppy, Gilroy Gardens... Balance that with board meeting prep, sales road trips, recruiting, fund raising, OKRs, product reviews, hack-a-thons, conferences... Good luck my friend.

mrkurt 12y ago
Still doable. It doesn't seem to get absolutely more busy, because they will also be in school for many hours a week four years from now. And they still sleep more than adults.
yesimahuman 12y ago
If that's your full time job, then how is it different from any other career? The thing people don't realize here is time spent doesn't actually mean anything. If you are just "hustling" all day it doesn't mean you are making progress. It's a false badge of honor. Also, these responsibilities force you to learn how to delegate. If you are doing everything yourself and not enabling your team to share the work and add their touch you are doing it wrong. I'd rather work with a balanced founder than one consistently on the edge of burnout and insanity.

comlonq 12y ago

Jesus christ man - all of this sacrifice for a time sheet application? Is it really worth it?

simi_ 12y ago

I read the title and realise I'm in the exact same situation: I have a wife, a 2nd year-old son, and my wife is 5 months pregnant. And tomorrow my startup finds out whether we got into YC W15!

JoseVigil 12y ago

I am married with a seven years old beautiful boy. The hardest part for me during these years of entrepreneurship have been the hassle of not giving enough financial resources to my family and instead putting money blindly into the company and project. In an "early" stage is likely and inevitable waste and mislead of money without exception. That, in my opinion is the hardest part of all aside from the time spent and the amount of love given mentioned. Personal elections and freedom of choice is cool but when the live style of your family is affected turns cumbersome and contradictory. I can tell a lot about that. Furthermore if the project fails, most of the time do, that money is gone and gone for the family too. Of course we all know that the experience pays off and the longer term economy will be much better, but at last. During the journey, your mind plays tricks that opposes completely to a family type of thinking of saving and caring about moving money to and for the family. Thats life, and part of the freedom of being moved by dreams and vision.

chuckcode 12y ago

I'm surprised about the number of judgemental posts and lack of real world approaches to help manage a classic resource allocation problem. We are all balancing priorities where we want to spend our time (and high quality time) between work, friends, family, hobbies etc. We can choose to do fewer things and we can try to be more efficient in the things we choose to do. What are approaches that HN has found useful to help do either? Personally I like some of Tad's approaches to set expectations and balance two things that are obviously very important to him. Shared google calendar and asana todo lists can certainly help communication with family and work but I haven't found anything that substitutes for spending 1:1 time with the toddler...

karlaugsten 12y ago

I cant help but think of Erlich Bachman's 'Aviato' when I hear 'Tiempo'.

BigChiefSmokem 12y ago
Which Elrich sold for a ton of money... like Steve. Anyways, 'Tiempo' means 'time' in Spanish.

idlewords 12y ago

"One advantage startups have over established companies is that there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. For example, I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children, or was likely to have them soon." - Paul Graham

hawkice 12y ago
It's surprising to me how seriously this is taken. Not many people would identify anti-workplace-discrimination laws as burdensome regulation. Most people (at least among the intelligensia) would just not discriminate and be done with it. The odd thing is, Graham doesn't appear to be even suggesting a criticism of any cover-your-ass bookkeeping, and he doesn't appear to say the regulation isn't the best tool to achieve equality, or any other more nuanced critique that may or may not end up having merit. He's suggesting that discrimination is good.

nkozyra 12y ago

One of the biggest misconception in the startup world is that there is a 1:1 relationship with the unquantifiable "hustle" and time spent in front of a computer. Long story short from me: a few years back my company was courted by one of the big guys. We had a staff of four and immediately thought "this is it." They asked a lot of us in this "discovery" process, and I was routinely working 18 hour days, and my productivity dipped further with each day. As I clamored to work more and therefore "get more done," I ended up getting less done than ever. The deal fell through but not due to not coming through for them. Fast forward to last year when my wife and I had our first kid. It's an immediate hit to your flexibility. For the first few months I felt helpless, I wanted to work all day long but I was exhausted. The more I tried to sneak work in, the less I got done, the grumpier I was and the less time I enjoyed with my family. It took months, but I realized that productivity in limited time is about efficiency and delegation. It's about finding what time-consuming responsibilities can be handled by others (either through charity or payment), it's about reducing recreation (or scheduling it for a certain time). I spend less time working now than I did when "hustling," but I get more done. When I sit down in the morning it is time to go. I don't check Facebook when I work. I don't go out to lunch, unless I'm meeting someone. Hustling is about effort, not time invested. Don't fall into the trap that says you can't beat someone with more time to spend on something, you just have to work that much smarter. It's a mistake to call it "balance," it's really about efficiency. Don't waste your time with your family and don't waste your time with your company - and finally: know that most people do waste time.

curiousDog 12y ago

As someone who is single and works as a programmer at a Big 4 and still struggles to make time for social life, would be nic e to see a write-up like this from an engineer. From what I've experienced, if you're coding day-day on high pressure projects, keeping tight-schedules like this is damn near impossible.

bernardlunn 12y ago

Beautifully articulated and I believe that the balance is hard but possible. It is of course easier to succeed in business if you ignore your family (and your health and your sanity), but that would certainly be a Pyrrhic victory.

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago

The thing which I always see missing from these descriptions is the persons other half. The usual logic runs - from 8am to 6pm I'm at work. From 6pm to 8.30pm I'm dad (or mum but realistically it's usually Dad). Once the kids are back in bed I get back on to e-mail, catch up with what I've missed and start planning the next day. That's great - you've covered work and your kids/family as a whole, but where are you fitting in time just as a couple? I'm not talking about weekends away or big nights out (though those are tough enough), I'm talking about just fitting in time to talk and catch up and remember why (and indeed that) you like each other. For me that's the toughest one. You or your other half can find time on your own - that's easy, the other one takes the kids. Time as a family is always a default for any spare time because guilt drives you towards your kids. The tough one is time as a couple because it's the one that by default comes after everything else and is therefore the first one to get squeezed.