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Ask HN: Successful Startup founders. Do they have families?

16 points by bwanab ↗ HN
It's my intuition that most successful startup founders do their startups before they have families of their own. Is this intuition correct, incorrect, or irrelevant to the success of a startup?

The obvious examples that support my contention are Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, but it's not obvious that those are actually representative of the huge diversity of startups. The problem is that I can't come up with any counterexamples.

22 comments

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warrenm
Most [successful] business founders are around 40[0][1][2][3] (or higher) - meaning if they are going to have a family, they probably already do

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[0] https://hbr.org/2021/12/dont-let-age-get-in-the-way-of-entre...

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2020/06/05/you-just-turn...

[2] https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/new-research-uncovers-ideal-a...

[3] https://smallbusiness.patriotsoftware.com/average-age-start-...

badpun
"Business founder" is very different than "startup founder" though, at least as it is understood on this forum.
warrenm
maybe

maybe not

If you check the links I provided, you'll see "startups" are included in those metrics

And successful (by whatever other metric you want to count) startups (and businesses in general) are relatively rare ...pretty sure I've heard that only about ~1:10 new businesses make it past 3 years. And "startups" have an even lower overall success rate.

You also have to account for serial founders - who may have a list of "not successful" and/or "failed" businesses before finally having a "successful" one ... which also, by dint of physics, means they'll - on average - be older by the time they are "successful" :)

gizmo
You’re correct. pg refers to startups as cramming a lifetime’s worth of work in ~8 years. Pretty hard to do that if a startup is your 3rd priority in life.

There are plenty of exceptions, of course. But as a general rule startup founders are young because young people have no responsibilities and the energy to keep going day after day, week after week, month after month, for years on end until they exit. An extra advantage young people have is they don’t know how hard it will be. Older, more experienced people don’t have this tailwind of ignorance.

dukeyukey
> But as a general rule startup founders are young

Successful entrepreneurs tend to be > 40. Young people have the time and energy, but they don't know shit compared to themselves in 15 years. See warrenm's post here.

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warrenm
>Older, more experienced people don’t have this tailwind of ignorance.

No, older people have a tailwind of experience that can ignore most failure paths

Irene
Jeff Bezos started Amazon with his wife MacKenzie. Anita Roddick and Gordon Roddick started The Body Shop.
gumballindie
Yeah but bezos and musk had family money. A bit different.
muzani
It seems like the sweet spot is the startup has to be made in a garage. So basically you'd have enough wealth to own a garage (as well as afford the cutting edge tech you're using), but be too broke to rent a nice office downtown.
quickthrower2
The garage is now in the cloud though, so you can start anywhere!
hipshaker
Elon Musk comes to mind
strikelaserclaw
lets be honest, the guy probably does the minimum of what it means to be a parent.
gumby
Yes, I had my biggest exit before having a kid, but I was married, and my wife did not have a visa that would allow her to work.

This was a bootstrap too.

extragood
In terms of big exits, Marc Randolph, Netflix's founder was married well before he started the company and had kids at the time.

In terms of (much) smaller exits, I'm the child of a startup founder. I was about age 8 and it was sold when I was about 25. It was never more than 20 people, and my dad was President as the founding engineer. It was enough for a solid middle class childhood for myself and a sibling in a VHCOL area and my dad and mom are very comfortable in retirement.

It helped that my mom was stay at home, I think. My dad bootstrapped his company and had to work on it nights when I was young after his paying job before they had enough customers that they could go full-time. They never took funding. He made time for us on the weekends, but my mom did all the weekday stuff

iamflimflam1
I would say it's irrelevant.

I know a bunch of founders and they range from young fresh out of University to almost hitting what would normally be retirement age.

I haven't seen any correlation between success and age/family.

eaglehead
TLDR: your intuition is irrelevant / incorrect.

I ran and exited a startup with a young family. My daughter was 4 yrs old when I sold my company and I started it a year before my daughter was born.

My strategy was to divide my work day as best as possible:

Priorities: 1. Time with wife and kid 2. Customer calls 3. Everything else

I started to wake up early to have an hour to get myself organized. I would then block 6-9am for breakfast with family. 9am-3pm (6 hours) of customer calls/coding etc. 3pm-10pm totally available for family and I would only skip for essential calls (i.e. the hell is about to break lose and I think I had one day every month like that lol). 6pm-7pm was bed time for my daughter that I was responsible for and I am still responsible for it till today. 7pm - 10pm was time with wife, completely available for her for anything she wants. 10pm-2am work on my startup again. This was the most productive time for me as everyone was sleeping and my customers didn't expect me to reply back to them either.

It wasn't easy. Could not have done this without my wife who decided to stay at home with kid to help with everything.

I ended up selling the company about a year ago and we made a decent return back that ensured that we are mortgage free, having enough saved for my daughter and now I am actually getting my proper night sleep.

Itching to start something new though..

gsuuon
How did you manage to keep a functioning brain with a kid and 4 hours of sleep a night? Were you able to sustain this long term or was this more of how the worst of it was? Were those 6 hours completely uninterrupted (and eating at desk)?

I'm trying something similar (prioritize family) and the scheduling aspect has been really brutal.

obaid
I did take break in those hours. Honestly it was tough to survive on 4 hours of sleep during weekdays. I usually slept in a bit on Sundays.

I would also recommend not to do it this way. It was brutal.

gsuuon
It's tough but feels worth it - I never feel like I've missed out on anything with my daughter since I'm always around. I think if I can just structure my day better it'll all work out a lot better, just haven't figured out how yet!
kohanz
Are you only looking for huge unicorn-like examples?

I founded and bootstrapped a startup the year my 3rd child was born and exited it (for a life-changing amount) about 4 years later.

Doing something before you have kids may mean that you have more actual time, but once you have kids you are also older, with more relevant industry experience and wisdom. Also, becoming a parent often makes a person more efficient, better at time management and prioritization. Parenting is the ultimate crash-course in adulting.

sircastor
When you're young you have a lot of time and a lot of energy. Some people pour that into a business and some people pour it into a family. It's challenging to do both.

I would drop the "successful" component from your question though. The amount of time and energy spent on a business can be an indicator of success, but it isn't always an indicator.