I provide for family with FT job. Good dad; marriage suffers w/my emo baggage. Progress is slow being bootstrapped & with family life. I work in fringes of time. Wife minimally supports me; complains of wasting time. She’s tired & Needs $ validation.

This is the main reason why I’m glad that I’m not married and trying to start a company. It’s a long, tough road and I don’t blame a wife for getting irritated at lack of success.

It’s much easier to go and work for another company and receive a regular salary. That’s why I’m glad that I’m an unmarried guy in his 20s trying to create a company. If I fail, only I get hurt; not a wife and kids. Good luck to you!

First of all; you can do it and not give up on your marriage, kids, or health. You will have to give up most of your social life, TV, and some sleep but don’t listen to those that say it’s your way or the highway with your marriage. Don’t ever forget that your kids will be much better off in life if you’re marriage is happy and healthy.

Here are some tips;

1) Have a serious financial talk with your spouse and get buy-in to save enough so you have personal runway to leave your job. The time issue is really secondary to having that $ runway.

2) Start slacking at your day job and pick up those daytime hours for your startup. I was at a big corp for 8 years and gave it much more than the 40/week they paid me for. I spent the next 2 years incubating my startup on the side and cutting into my day job as payback. I still got my job done, but wasn’t going ‘above and beyond’ since I knew my time there was coming to an end. Is this cool–no, but it ‘s real world.

3) Assess ALL financial options before jumping ship. Feel out friends and family, crowdfunding, banks (yes–they still lend money if you have assets), grants, etc. Don’t buy the hype you need Angels/VCs.

Above all else; answer what matters most to you–what do I want to look back on when I’m old as my legacy? A great company, fat bank account, or a happy family?

I hope you said all 3.

After a similar experience launching my first startup, I started my second startup to help , “Married with Kids Entrepreuners” with day jobs launch startups. You can check it here: http://www.vaayoo.com . Basically, we act as a CTO department for new startup. We implement and launch products for them based on the entrepreuners vision.

The best part, we take on all the risks. The entrepreuner pays a small monthly subscription fee, when the product is launched. If the product works , the entrepreuner can dive in and quit his full time job. We are agile, so we upgrade products frequently. This allows entrepreuners to tweak their offering and make it successful. All this in monthly subscription payment.

If the product does not work, even after iterating, the entrepreuner just calls us and stops paying monthly fees. He moves onto the next thing or continues with his day job.