[yummyfajitas]

My strong suggestion: do the startup before getting married, but while you live with your potential future spouse under marriage-like conditions.

My personal experience: I had a live-in gf (and possible future spouse), and I spent about a year in startup crunch mode on an academic research project (which I hoped to leverage into a future startup). It put a major strain on our relationship - she worked outside the home, I worked primarily at home, and she didn't get the concept of "physically at home but working and unavailable." We are no longer together, in part because of this.

Your SO may be incompatible with your startup - it's far better to discover things like this before getting married. You may choose the SO over the startup, but you should be aware you are making that choice.

Worst case scenario: an ex-wife who acted as a burden throughout the startup process walks away with 50% of your successful company.

(Note: a prenup won't help much - courts are in the habit of nullifying them if the judge doesn't like them. Witness the whole Elon Musk fiasco.)

[infinite8s]

I believe Elon Musk had a post-nuptial agreement