| There was a period after my son was born where I definitively wouldn't have tried another startup, but that too changes quickly (he's 6 now) And while, yes, I can't gamble my income as I could before, I've never gone more than 1 month without income despite having been through more than half a dozen startups, and I've never had to trade a decent salary to get equity other than at my first startup (at 19; we were all clueless of business and hopelessly underfunded - we started an ISP with about $50k and lived on our student loans for the first year). Maybe I've just been lucky, but fear of losing my salary just does not factor in to me. Nor does the idea of having to sacrifice salary. When joining my last startup, I took 7.5% in options coupled with a salary offer 20% above my previous job, with the only sacrifice being that I put in evenings and some weekend work for "free" for a few months before our A round closed. Incidentally the founders of the last startup I mentioned above were both older, one of them had three young children, and a wife who worked part time on another startup. Many at my age have reached the level of financial stability where setting aside enough savings to be secure for a year or two of uncertain income is easy enough to even make bootstrapping less stressful if I were to opt for that. The biggest change for me is that my priorities have changed. I'm not so interested in chasing after the billion dollar exit, as I've come to realise how little money matters to my happiness, and that will change how/when/what I do next time I start a company or join another startup. |