Wayne Crosby of Zenter

"JR: What was the downside of your experience YC?

Y Combinator requires you to move to either Cambridge, MA (Summer session) or Mountain View, CA (Winter session). The night we submitted our application to Y Combinator, we found out my wife was pregnant with our first child. The hardest decision my wife and I made was me going off to do a startup while she remained in AZ. We bought video phones and used Skype video conferencing every night to stay in touch. The video phones helped a ton, especially since I only made 1 trip back home in the 3 months. Looking back it was absolutely the right decision for me, the family, and our future - but it sucked not being around her for 3 months."

http://pioneerit.blogspot.com/2007/04/my-innoview-with-wayne...

Awesome...exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for. Thanks!

I'm not a YC applicant. Part of this was because Paul Graham made it pretty clear that he believes that having a family is at odds with a startup: http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html

The charitable part of me wants to believe the "I'm not willing to take responsibility..." angle, but it treads awfully close to discrimination.

I assumed that this would work against us to the point where it wasn't worth applying. The same way that single founder teams are canned almost before they are read.

Note that it doesn't actually matter if this is the case. My impression based on public information led me to this conclusion and YC lost out on a great team and idea. I'm sure I'm not alone.

I'm putting my money where my mouth is: the rest of my cofounders are also all married. Most of us have kids.

We're doing just fine, thanks:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/07/prweb1139914.htm

http://blog.luckycal.com/?p=15

http://gigaom.com/2008/08/25/mobilize-launchpad-contestants-...

A little defiant, eh? I like it.

When is it ever worth not applying? I'm sure that certain things hurt your chances in YC's eyes, but hopefully they don't have such blinders on that all of those things are immediate deal-killers. I feel that the exercise of filling out the application is useful in itself, and if they pass, no loss.

When leaving your family for 3 months isn't worth it.

Well, that's a personal decision, obviously, but your post didn't say anything about you not applying because you didn't want to be away from your family, just that you didn't think YC would accept you because you have a family.

My co-founder is married with two kids. We were in winter 2007. Neither of us is young and fresh out of college (I was 32, he was 33, at the time). When we were accepted, I had a house in Austin, a 350Z, a long-time girlfriend, and a dog. The house was sold in record time (to the first person who looked at it, the day before the open house), the Z was sold, the girlfriend got a job at Google, and the dog rode right beside me in the moving truck. My co-founder already lived in Santa Clara, so it wasn't quite as much of an upheaval for him.

tons of respect and congratulations for that.

Wow a 350z, that must have been rough.

It seemed like it at the time. But I knew getting garage space would be almost impossible, and given how much I worried over my car whenever it was outside, I knew it'd be stupid to bring it out here if I didn't really need a car.

Mountain View is a pretty walkable and bike-able little town, more than I expected, even. I rarely miss having a car, and I certainly don't miss the hassles that come with having a car: Insurance, registration, etc. And, let me tell you...insurance on a two-seater sports car, for a male driver, under 35, with a handful of speeding tickets, is not a trivial consideration. I paid nearly as much to drive my car as I did to live in my house in Austin, and since living in a house here in the valley costs twice as much as in Austin, it all evens out pretty...umm...evenly.

I enjoy biking and walking quite a lot, and they're certainly healthier activities than driving for myself and the world, so I think it's a really good trade. I think it'd be an even better trade in SF, but it'll probably be another year before I head up that way. I like the lack of distraction in Mountain View while getting the company off the ground.

I love my Z. But I suppose if you succeed you could go splurge and get yourself a new Skyline.

I'm thinking if I were going to spend $70k on a car, I might as well go all the way around the bend and get a Tesla at $109k. Though the Skyline is a beauty, and much faster than the Tesla. And, I drive so little that it probably isn't going to make a big difference one way or the other to the environment (factoring in environmental impact of battery production, etc., I guess...I dunno).

I think California is getting to me, because I'm also thinking the Altima hybrid looks pretty swish.

my z just lost its poor engine ;-( The dealer says the oil looked like mercury. driving it out to the valley must have put too much stress on it or something. the current estimated repair bill is $12k. i sure hope i can get the extended warrenty to kick in.

Being married and having a child is not a liability. The liability comes if the partner requires a lot of attention, and does not allow you to pursue your dreams. I.e, if you're married to a needy person, then you'll not have the flexibility to push limits.

I actually think being married is a good thing, because you are more likely to do things that are safe and that will lead to steady upwards growth, instead of trying to play the lotto and hoping for a blowout.

Hmmm...not sure that anyone would characterize founding a web startup as "safe" ;-)

It's VERY safe. Try starting a restaurant. You have to borrow money, you need to handle staffing, fire problems, etc. That's a risky business. A web business, if it fails, you lose nothing.

We businesses are really very low risk business. Mostly, in case of failure, you just lose some time.

Hmmm...I understand what you're saying, but you seem to be presenting a false dichotomy where the only two options are starting a web company or a restaurant. For the vast majority of people with kids, the "safe" option is getting a good job that pays well and offers good benefits.

It's also a bit disingenuous to say that if your web business fails, you lose nothing. Perhaps that's true for a single guy who is starting a company with some friends, but for the average married founder w/kids, there is a significant investment that will need to made in the form of time spent on their startup, as well as mental and psychological energy. Not to mention any cash investment, and the lost income that could have been earned with the time spent on the startup. If you fail, there is a cost.

I just completed a YC session and my co-founder was married, but no children. I must say, an entire summer seems like it might put a bit of stress on your relationship.

Let me be very clear! You can definitely do a startup if you have a family. YCombinator and startups are a great opportunity for anyone, regardless of age or family situation.

With that being said, a YC summer can be very intensive. Three full months apart and under stress might be more than you were bargaining for in terms of your relationship with your spouses and family. It seems like if all three of you are in this situation the odds are good that at least one of you will run into a problem.

There were a lot of guys in our class who had serious girlfriends and they all seemed to come out fine. My co-founder is married and our startup is doing just fine. Just think about what could happen, I would hate for that to be a big distraction for you guys.

TipJoy's founders are married and working together.

My wife and I are bootstrapping right now.

Do you have any general comments on starting a business with your wife. It can be such a stressful environment at times - wondering how you guys have dealt with the downs.

I talked with the father of a VC a few months ago. He said that his son's divorce had just cost him $10 million in a divorce settlement. I'm thinking: Jesus! $10 million pays for a lot of roses and marriage counseling.

Regarding handling the downs: That's tough. We usually take a break from the action, spend time with each other and regroup. Generally, we work a lot more on prevention of marriage problems instead of trying to put out fires, though. If we're starting to squabble with each other, it's probably because there's an issue that needs to be addressed, and we need to take the time to work it out.

Our marriage comes first. Having a multi-million dollar exit would be really nice, but it's not going to keep us warm at night.

We have a weekly meeting in which we talk about about relationship stuff, and make sure things are okay on that front. We're a lot more productive when our relationship is working well. It's a good business decision and it makes for a much funner journey.

We've also made a point of taking breaks from the action. Every 3 months or so, we take a road trip for a couple of nights. We both work really hard, so it's helpful to unplug and focus on the relationship every couple of months.

Probably the best marriage advice I could give anyone is to do some preventative marriage counseling. My wife and I made a point of going to marriage counseling the first year after we got married. It's not that our relationship was on the rocks, we just wanted to get it right. So, we spent a year going to a marriage counselor and got a whole bag full of tools to work on our marriage. It's helped us for years, and I'd recommend it to anyone in a serious relationship.

I'm not a YC founder, but I do have a wife and children.

As to your original question: don't worry about it. Just focus on your application, and try to get some sort of basic demo of your idea together.

Oh, it's not going to stop us, or even slow us down. If anything, having responsibilities like a wife and kids has focused our energies on what's really important to us.

I was just curious as to how YC might view things like this.

I'm a founder who's married with two kids (27 years old). One of the reasons I'm not able to join YC on even the east coast (I live a couple hours from Boston) is my family. I can't move them or myself away from them for a 'boot camp', just not feasible.

I think YC is missing out on some great opportunities but that's just my viewpoint.

Perhaps your desire for success doesn't compel you as strongly as your desire for a stable family life.

That's absolutely fine, but my instincts (and some very successful people I know personally) tell me that successful entrepreneurs who start a business with families have to ask their families to make some sort of sacrifice to support their endeavor.

My wife and I have had this very conversation - we live in the Bay Area, but my Dear Wife is very level headed when it comes to prioritizing decisions like this. Life experience counts for more than immediate comfort for her. She comes from an entrepreneurial family, so that probably helps.

Perhaps his definition of "success" doesn't involve him feeling embarassed about what he did to his family for a long shot, even if he made it. Note also that regardless of how you and your wife appear to feel about it now, your perspective may change 10 years from now. Mine has. I'm embarassed. Not a good feeling.

Fair enough, and I agree - nothing's for free. For me, the fear that 10 years from now I would regret not taking a chance is greater than the worry that I will feel as you do. It's a personal choice.

It could be an advantage. It's nice to have one person in the family with a stable income you can fall back on, while trying to get things off the ground.

Tipjoy. The founders are married (to each other) and they have a (really cute) kid.

I get the feeling that YC is based on a different set of values and insights than your typical VC firm is. Just my impression, of course, but I get the feeling that PG is trying out a social "hack".

There's a magical section of life that a lot of people don't take advantage of - the first few years out of college, when your responsibilities and personal needs are very, very low. A lot of people in their early twenties who don't go directly to grad school spend this time as paralegals, programmers for bigCorps, and so forth.

In a way, YC is testing out a perfect hack - showing how a remarkably small amount of money, along with just a bit of encouragement, can completely alter the course of a lifetime - and, if it is successful and spreads as a model, ultimately change the nature of careers and work.

It's not that married founders with kids and a mortgage can't participate, but if "married with kids" describes you (and it certainly describes me), you probably aren't in that state anymore. But it's up to you to decide - I do know a startup founder who is 40 with a wife and little one (his wife works, though, which helps a lot - though in this case, the few grand YC offers would be irrelevant, and he's funded through a more traditional investment approach). I know lots and lots of married programmers with kids who work as early employees of startups. I could recommend this, because if you're very skilled in Silicon Valley, you can probably get a new job quickly - but it's probably nothing like being in YC.

I remember my first few years after college - I lived near the beach in San Diego, my rent was about $325 a month, and I surfed constantly. Then I went to grad school. Wouldn't have been a bad time to try a startup, I suppose.

Time for a New Venture Animal: Ymwkcombinator

Good line! Count me in!

Thanks for posing the question. I'd been wondering the same, Have there been any YC startup people with teenagers??!!!

I suppose having teenagers would be a great way to recruit your first coding employees! Except mine aren't techies at all. Yet.

If they aren't techies by their teens, and they've had access to technology at all, they never will be. And that's OK. Let'em be what they're gonna be.

This is not true. I had access to all sorts of technology growing up. It wasn't until I got to college that I realized how important it is in being able to make a computer do almost anything you wanted it to given enough time and insight into the problem you want to solve.

Perhaps I've made it sound more dramatic than it should be. It is, as in all things, a spectrum of possibilities, not a black and white thing. That said, there's a type of person that becomes a hacker. While it is a choice, just like being an athlete or a musician, it's also a temperament that not all people possess. So, one might enjoy technology and find it useful to understand it, or one might find it to be the most satisfying and interesting thing to spend time on--and this, I believe, is a trait exhibited very early.

I don't, of course, think only the latter should be "allowed" to write code or make a living with technology (nearly everyone will be a knowledge worker in the coming years, so no one can avoid it). I just think they tend to be the ones producing the code that runs the Internet and everything else of real interest in the technology world. It's just such a deep subject that one really has to love it to have any chance of being seriously productive in the field. So, while I believe one can learn to play a musical instrument as an adult, if you aren't passionate enough about it to spend many hours each day on it (and not in a hardcore slamming your fingers down on the keyboard one more time...just in the sense of always learning about the subject and always expanding your horizons), you probably won't be a great musician. It doesn't make it any less valid a pursuit--as long as you derive pleasure from the time you spend with it, it's a productive use of time. Likewise hacking...but you probably won't produce work of significant note without a pretty strong drive to do so.

So, I guess I should make clear that I don't believe any talent is natural (excepting a few prodigies, perhaps) or inborn, certain traits are. And there are traits that are deeply ingrained that just make a big difference in whether one will enjoy the hacking process. Also note that I'm not claiming to be particularly far down that spectrum, or to have produced any significant work in the field. I was both a computer nerd and a music nerd very early in life, and I didn't choose to focus almost completely on technology until my mid-twenties.

Right. And I didn't get it until I was a year out of college. When you know it's what you want to do, you go out and do it (this is a definition of adulthood).

Same here. At the time I was busy being a teenager, going to school, and all that stuff. When I got to college and took CS1 I was hooked. I think the switch from mostly schoolwork that didn't interest me (in high school) to mostly schoolwork that did (college) is what did it. I finally had time to concentrate on programming.

pg is married! No kids yet, though, afaik.

Sure, but pg is also an old bull now. He wasn't married when he started Viaweb.