“A Doable Sacrifice:” Y Combinator as a Married Man

I started my company (Zoho Corp) after I got married and our son was born within a couple of years of it. One co-founder already had a kid by the time we got started. It helped that none of us were into "youth culture" but more of a "geek culture" - even at 23, we were far more interested in seeking out people to discuss The Economist than to go to a bar ... I am not ashamed to admit it!<p>My point is you can have a reasonably normal family life and you can build a company. These are not mutually exclusive. Some of the insane stuff people say they have had to do (30 hours of nonstop coding and so on) ... I am not sure all of that is <i>required</i> for success. Hard work, yes, many sacrifices, yes, but we can get a lot done in a 50 hour focused work-week, and we don't have to sacrifice all normal human relationships (parents, spouses, kids, friendships...) to build a company. What would be the point of that?<p>Yes, of course, if I had set a goal that we had to exit in 4 years it would have been a different story.

Being married is one thing; having kids is another.<p>As an entrepreneur with two young children, I know it's hard to keep a balance.<p>The hard part isn't necessarily the limited number of hours. It's possible to build a successful startup while working 40 hours a week, provided you're really focused and not goofing around during those hours.<p>What's hard is many startups have a youth culture that glorifies in working all the time, though much of that time is drinking beer and playing foosball. That's great when you're 23. But I (and many others with kids) would much prefer a professional culture of focused, intense work from 10 AM to 6 PM.

My startup, in hindsight, was one of the biggest factors contributing to my divorce. I don't blame anything other than my own choices/mistakes (and certainly not YC). I don't think it's impossible to do both happily, in fact I probably would have pulled it off had I been married to a different person.

Family conditions matter, but what also matters is the personal motivation.<p>I've just turned 40 and have one kid and another on the way. I guess I'm having a mid-life crisis when it comes to my work life and have decided to try to do something on my own.<p>Yes, with a pregnant wife and a young kid, it is difficult, but personal motivation and focus has so far kept me going, at least as far as developing the MVP is concerned. But, on the other hand, I did think about a revenue model before starting my project and not as an after thought.<p>I wish I had had this itch 10-15 years ago, but I cannot change the past, only influence my future.

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Doable looks weird as a word. I read it as double. I believe it might look better hyphenated like do-able