[benhoyt]

Very helpful and inspiring. Thanks! But:

> We're taking on some consulting projects, but we're going to keep working on the startup.

All good if you're single, but what if you've got a wife and family and just need the cash? (Okay, feel free to say you shouldn't start a startup with a family, but it's too late... :-)

[brlewis]

This can still be a totally inspiring essay for that situation.

The real threat posed by taking on consulting is not what it does to your time; seeking funding would eat up lots of time as well. The threat is what it does to your determination. When the startup seems hopeless you can easily drop it and make consulting your focus.

If you're determined enough, you'll come up with a plan to maintain that determination even if consulting goes well and the startup goes terribly.

[edw519]

Absolutely! Sometimes I think that I'm "startup cursed" because I find it so easy to pound the pavement and rustle up a few bucks. Ironically, what is an asset in the real world is a liability in the startup world. I haven't completely turned my back on other income while I code my startup, but I have to look at it very carefully. All other activities must pass an additional acid test: "What will this endeavor contribute to my startup?" If I don't have a good answer, I pass on it and get back to coding.

[gscott]

>All good if you're single, but what if you've got a wife >and family and just need the cash?

This is doable, you need to be able to at least get your application developed and maintain hosting for it, but work also for others so you can have an income. This is what I have done at least.

I thought my system would develop revenue right away, but the number of sign ups it took to create a paying customer cost more then what I could afford and natural search traffic was just not coming fast enough.

So I gave it away free so I could figure out the money part later. Not to mention the system wasn't very mature, it needed a revision to bring the quality up and then what seemed like months of bug fixing.

Out of my biding my time, putting out incremental improvements, and building good repore with the users I have discovered instead of putting out a generic product, success will come from taloring very specific products out of my generic product. Using my application as sort of a platform of generic parts to build a system for a particular market.

Having kids, wife, things have still worked out fine.

[ph0rque]

Why not ask the wife to be the temporary breadwinner while you concentrate on your project?

[benhoyt]

It might be a good solution, except that we have a 6-month-old daughter. And I'm very happy that we do, but it does make startup decisions harder. :-)

[davidw]

You could work from home and be interrupted by the daughter, no? I have thoughts in that direction if we have kids. Not going to be easy, but at least one person is working a stable job that earns money, and if you can carve out time between the interruptions, you can get something done. Obviously I don't have kids and don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe it's even worse than I imagine!

[dfens]

Three words: "Working for Families"

[steve]

That's really dodging his question:)

[electric]

I have two kids, my wife works, I used to work at a high tech company and we had to save up for a couple of years before going the startup route. Now it is all startup -- so that is good.

We gave up a lot financially to be here. If you have kids and a family it does take a lot more work, but it is not impossible. Just work it out with your wife.

[palish]

It seems like the success rate for that situation is minuscule, if you define 'success' as getting rich and not just supporting yourself.

[run4yourlives]

Life is about compromise.

I don't think most startup founders with families are looking at the same picture of success as those right out of college.

[palish]

That explains the low success rate.

[run4yourlives]

If you're defining success as rich enough to be written about in Newsweek, yes.