Startup vs family. What the %#@& do I do?

Someday you will look back at these days with fondness — “remember when I was starting [company that made me rich] and we were totally broke?” Enjoy your family, enjoy your baby, try not to worry too much about the money. If you’ve got a roof over your head and you’re not starving, you’ll be OK for a couple years. American society tries to sell you a lot of things you don’t need, especially once you have kids. You can survive on much less than you think if you’re willing to give up the idea you need a huge home, hotshot car, neat wardrobe, fancy food, vacations. Enjoy this moment, each moment, each day. Do it for a year, if you hate it and it doesn’t work out, then yeah, probably time to check out and go 9 to 5 for a bit. But don’t expect it to solve your problems — it just replaces one set with a new set. Life’s short.

I’m also in a similar situation. I left my job almost 2 years ago. Since then I’ve brought in a total of 4 months of part time consulting income to help stay afloat as the money has dwindled. I had about 2.5 yrs worth of runway when I left my job and started my company. I spent the first year building a technically challenging product that I ended up pivoting away from. My new product is a few weeks away from launching and we just took a very small seed investment (under 60k).

I went from a mid six figure salary to making less then $30k a year with consulting. My wife is starting to feel the pressure, every few months she has a minor financial breakdown. She makes enough to cover about 30% of the bills, so I cover the rest with the savings I put aside for this venture. We live in an apartment that is more then I’d like to spent. But we’ve cut in so many other ways. We almost never eat out anymore, we dont travel, we pretty much try to spend as little money as possible. She’s been very supportive, but I can see how this is a strain on her and how she misses the lifestyle we grew a custom to.

An important part of being a founder is being able to take step back and take a look where you are now and where you’re going. Ask yourself some questions… Why has it taken 2 yrs to get to this point? Have I done all the right things to validate my idea? Can I build something that doesn’t scale to test that validity? Is there a chance to generate revenue soon after launch. Can you charge people now for the service? And the most important question… Is this working? Every so often I sit down with my co-founder and we take a status check of the company: Are we having fun? Do we believe in the vision still? And should we shut down? That last question is the hardest one to answer. You need to know when you’ve given something your best shot and it’s time to walk away. And it doesn’t matter how much you’ve invested, time or money. Leave “pot committed” for poker. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars getting my company started, plus over $200k in forgone salary. I’m not suggesting that you walk away and shut down. I’m just saying you need to have the foresight to know when its time. Look, startups are hard. I wake up some days and think that we are doomed and should shut down. Then the next day I have a good conversation with a potential customer and I’m excited and re-energized.

So step back for a minute. Take a look at your life, your wife and your business and see where they all piece together. I know plenty of people that start companies with families. Techcrunch glamorizes the teams that work 22 hrs a day and stay up all night drinking redbull. Your startup is not a sprint, its a long paced marathon. I work 10am – 7pm, I go home and spend 2 -3 hrs with my wife eating dinner/watching tv/whatever and then work another 2 or 3 hrs. I pick one night during the week to try and spend a little extra time, maybe do date night (even if its a movie or something free). Weekends i’ll work the mornings and afternoons and try and give her the evenings. Could I be working more hours? Sure. I worked at a started some years back and worked 16 hrs a day, 7 days a week. I was sleeping in the office several nights a week. It ended with me being extremely burned out, sick and regretful that I didn’t spend any time with my family or friends. Also it wasn’t fun. Moral of the story is that its possible to find the right work/life balance.

No one can tell you what to do. But heres an idea. Is there an MVP you can get out in the next 2-3 weeks? Can you go sell a product that doesn’t exist? I have 5-10 companies that want to join my beta before my product exists. I’ve been sending them product screen shots for the last 2 months to collect their feedback and get them excited. I’m confident that once I launch I can have a few paying users relatively quickly. I don’t know what kind of business you’re building, but can you do something like this? If your business has no model and you aren’t going to raise money, then nothing quick is going to happen, so maybe consider moving it to a side project? But if you can get something up soon, maybe give yourself 2-3 months to see where things go. If the feedback isn’t good and people aren’t using it, then it might be time to re-evaluate. If things are moving forward and you’re seeing signs of early tractions, then thats at least enough to keep moving forward. Also early traction can be used to raise a small seed round.

Hope this is remotely helpful. Best of luck.