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
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.
I did essentially the same thing before leaving CBS/CNET earlier this year to found http://recent.io/ -- saving salary over multiple years, buying a smaller house on the SF peninsula rather than a bigger one with a larger mortgage, etc. That gave me the luxury of being able to work-full time on creating this recommendation/prediction engine and accompanying app without worrying about income for now.
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 :)
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.
If you're good enough at building things and selling yourself to successfully start a startup, you're also good enough to get a high-paying job. Easily 2x or 3x the median salary for your area.
Do that, and then live a median lifestyle. You can save a year's living expenses every year you're working. In five years you can have a five year runway.
"Do that, and then live a median lifestyle. You can save a year's living expenses every year you're working. In five years you can have a five year runway."
This assumes a median lifestyle is sustainable, and ignores the progressive nature of income tax. At 3x you can probably still do as you say. At 2x you strictly can't unless the median lifestyle includes some savings - the second 1x is taxed more than the first 1x.
Two or three times the median salary? That just seems false. I'd love for you to prove me wrong though.
For example, the median salary for a mid level front-end developer in my area is $81k. If you can find someone (anywhere) making $160,000 - $243,000 at the same position please have them send me an email.
Yes, I meant median salary of all people living in the area. Not of developers.
For example, here in Boston median salary is $58,000. Developers can readily get $116,000, and I know many who have exceeded $174,000, at least when taking into account bonuses, RSUs, etc.
My point is that plenty of people obviously afford to live near you while making only median salary. If you live the same lifestyle as them, you have a huge ability to save money.
That's a major factor keeping me from doing a start-up full-time. Unless it's profitable from day one (enough to pay your expenses), you can't actually live while doing it. Sure, you can eat noodles every night, but you can't just stop paying your mortgage/rent/student loans/etc for a year while you try to bootstrap.
>> c. are in fact paying themselves a salary (and hiding it from investors?)
Do you think all those founders don't pay themselves salaries until the company becomes profitable? I'd bet 99% seed stage startup founders do pay themselves a salary.
I'd say the majority of startup co-founders don't pay themselves until they hit a critical point where they no longer see paying themselves as a "negative" act to the company.
That critical point could be reaching profitability, or signing a large round of funding, or landing a key client.
Most of the co-founders I've talked with, or have heard speak publicly (I counted at least 2 speakers this year at startup school), borderline brag about how they went x number of years with no salary. I think sometimes it's an act. There's no way declaring bankruptcy or defaulting on your loans can feel good. Other times I feel like that's a direct influence from investors. For example I've heard verbatim the following sentence from an investor:
"We want you [speaking to an audience about investing] to live like college kids. You know, eat ramen noodles, borrow food from friends, live on your buddies couch, take the bus to the office. At no point should you rely on investor money to pay your own bills"
A part of me agrees with that mentality. You should be financially independent of investor money as a co-founder. Another part of me sees a benefit in keeping a co-founder at some level of comfort. If they don't have to worry about paying for food this month then their work performance would surely increase.
A person who is financially independent (of investor money or otherwise) enough to embark on a business without taking a salary is one who doesn't need investor money for his business anyway. That is, unless the goal is explicitly to have rocket growth and exit, lottery style (via IPO or acquisition).
On the other hand, businesses for which "rocket growth to a large exit" are feasible are not going to have their success hinge on whether the founders pay themselves a market salary once they have funding. So it seems to me the restriction you quote of an investor is more an assertion of power than a reasonable constraint.
I think it's a question of how much salary. There seems to be a consensus "unwritten" understanding that founders pay themselves (well below) market rate, if they pay themselves anything. After all, they're in for some very big rewards if their company succeeds, and making it a success includes putting as much capital into the business as possible, at the expense (in part) of one's own salary.
I'm not convinced this is a fair arrangement for the founder(s), especially in the current environment, where the times to scale and the exit valuation requirements are such as they are. It seems to me, at least, in the current environment that if the success (from an investor's "big exit" point of view) of a company hinges in part on the founder(s) taking less than market salary, the company is already not necessarily a good candidate for the exit track required to justify investment.
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