Ask YC: To The Young, How Supportive Are Your Parents?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=195883

by rockstar9 • 18 years ago

22 23 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

For the younger crowded on Hacker News, how supportive are your parents to a startup? It seems most stress the importance of some work experience first. Any experiences? What problems have some of you guys faced?

michael_dorfman• 18 years ago

No longer being young myself, I can't speak from direct experience here-- but I can say that I was called in to help in the dismantling of a disastrous start-up founded by a young'un, and largely parent-funded. In this particular case, at least, there was an outrageously unrealistic business plan, and the parents were acting as blind angels-- performing none of the reality checks that normal funding sources would apply. I think the business would have been much more successful if the founder had gotten more constructive criticism along the way, and less cash to burn.

So, where it is great if parents are supportive, I think there are many forms this support can come in, and some can be counter-productive.

mpc• 18 years ago

I'm not sure if I qualify as young (25), but coming from a different generation, they don't quite understand wanting to turn down a 100k job to bootstrap something with a very small chance of success.

I can understand this, after all my dad was a civil engineer and worked at the same company for 30 years. They also think of starting a startup in the terms of starting a company in the past. For example, opening a store. I've pointed out that it's much different now for technology and web companies.

Either way, they're always pretty excited even if they don't quite get it.

xirium• 18 years ago

> they don't quite understand wanting to turn down a 100k job to bootstrap something with a very small chance of success.

Your average income will exceed US$100,000. You have a small chance of becoming a billionaire and a larger chance of getting nothing. You can repeat this process five or 10 times before you succeed - or take a US$100,000 job.

The contention is that parents see your likely income being below your true potential.

dangoldin• 18 years ago

I'm 24 and my parents seem to be supportive but I think a large part of that is that we came to the US in the late 80s so they may have the entire "risk" mindset.

fallentimes• 18 years ago

It's been sort of a weird situation not just between myself and my parents, but between myself and my entire extended family. I come from a very conservative (in the life style sense, not the political one) family. No one, including Aunts, Uncles, Parents, Grandparents and cousins, has lived in a big city let alone start their own company.

Luckily, a few years ago, I was able to land an internship in Chicago for a few summers, which I think made my family realize I wanted something slightly more adventurous than middle class Ohio/Michigan. After graduating, I was able to obtain a full-time job in Washington DC, launch a successful micro business (less than 3k revenue in FY07) and launch a successful small business (revenue of around 85k in FY07).

For my parents and family, they've accepted that I'll be taking a very different path than the "family norm" and even though they don't understand exactly what I'm doing, they're happy because I'm happy. However, if I had decided to quit my "good" job, move to Boston and launch a startup with no experience running a previous business or living in a big city, I think they would have been extremely hesitant in their support.

maxklein• 18 years ago

Work experience is CRITICAL! How can you start a business when you don't know how one works? Why make mistakes when 6 months in a company will already point out most of the mistakes? How do you expect to make your employees happy when you do not know how it feels to be an employee? How can you manage properly if you have never had a terrible manager?

Get a job, save the money, then quit the job and start your business. This is a sensible and clever solution, and trying to start a business by depending on your parents and bootstrapping and hunting for capital is frankly...stupid.

ambition• 18 years ago

When have parents ever been supportive of risky behaviour in their children?

I say this in defense of my non-supportive mother and somewhat-supportive father.

j2d2• 18 years ago

When have parents ever been supportive of risky behaviour in their children?

It depends on what you mean by "risky". My barely present parents never advocated I drive a car recklessly but they fully supported me (mentally, anyway) when I hopped in a van to travel with a band for a month even though I was completely broke at the time.

ken• 18 years ago

When they've got 3 others who are more stable! :/

iamelgringo2• 18 years ago

I'm not young, (turned 35 today), but I have a number of war stories about regarding parents and their being supportive.

For the first 14 years of my life, we lived as missionaries in Central America. And, on top of that, we moved around tons. I moved 20 times before I was 21. So, I didn't really have tons of chances to develop lasting friendships aside from my parents, brothers and sisters like most teenagers. The first couple of times that I went against the parental flow, it was really rough.

So, there was an immense resistance when I wanted to get our of the family business (being preachers) and follow my own dream of being a software engineer. The first time my Dad found out that I had been on a BBS, I got grounded for a week. They talked me out of majoring in CS back in 93, because they were convinced that computers were a fad. Doh! And, they talked me into being a nurse so I could have a steady job. And, that's what I've been doing for money for 15 years.

I've been trying to escape nursing for 15 years. I've tried a bunch of different ideas: painting, sculpture, architecture, furniture design, Animation, Visual Effects... Non of which my family approved of or supported. Finally, I decided to go back and pursue my first love--programming and engineering. I've been chipping away at my schooling online for the past 5 years, and I'm done this semester. Meanwhile, my parents were trying to talk me out of it the entire time.

So, I'm now embarking on my first startup idea, a suite of online tools to make contract nurses lives easier. And, finally, after 15 years, they're a little excited about what I'm doing. Honestly, they only started coming around to the idea of my starting an online business since Startup School.

They finally understood that there might be something to these computer things after all.

lacker• 18 years ago

Happy birthday!

iamelgringo2• 18 years ago

Thanks.

xenoterracide• 18 years ago

my parent's are in their 70s. I don't think they have much faith in my ability to pull this off, and they certainly don't understand the internet or even computers. They support me as much as they can.

eisokant• 18 years ago

I am 17 years old myself and am still living at home, at least for a few more months till I move to London.

My parents have been supportive since day 1 I picked up a programming book together with a business book; determined to create an e-commerce site for a local retailer. To be honest I see myself more as a business oriented person then as a hacker, but I thoroughly enjoy writing code nonetheless.

While in high school (I am now in my last 3 days) I had to travel a lot for various business projects and all throughout my family has supported me and never stopped me to pursue my dreams and goals. Since September '07 though, my IB diploma has been my primary focus and I've had to put off my goals and ideas up until this Friday. I fully agree that work experience adds tremendous value to your chances of success because theory never quite cuts it in reality. For anyone reading this, my age or younger I can not stress enough to go out and get an internship at a company in the field you want to later be in. Get experience by listening to those older then you but never shy away from giving your input. The most important lessons I learned from real-life experience are:

1. Only surround yourself with people who want you to be successful. Find those people that have integrity and character and don't bother with the rest.

2. Never underestimate the power of networking, and make it one of your top priorities for your business.

I am about to launch my first full blown company and will go to India for 2 months to work with a development team. It's an exciting time and my parents are very supportive of me and have faith in me. Which provides you with a great basis to start from because you'll run into enough people who won't.

sehansen• 18 years ago

Well, my mom has been trying to make me start a company since I was 16 and told her I wanted that someday...

mrtron• 18 years ago

Work experience can be extremely valuable in starting up. I would even recommend going through the startup process as an employee if possible to learn some good and bad practices.

Personally my parents think I am crazy for attempting it. My father who ran his own business for 25+ years strongly encouraged me not to do the same. However, like him, I have the desire and he recognizes this.

Parents want the best for you, but don't necessarily know what is best for you.

kynikos• 18 years ago

My parents support me as much as they can, despite limited knowledge and understanding.

While I'm sure they'd love to see my startup succeed, they are sensible people and are always highlighting the advantages of more stable, 9-5 type of employment. We definitely don't see eye to eye on many things in that regard, however they are always interested in what's going on, what we've got planned, and are always there to celebrate the little successes. When it comes down to it, that's all that matters.

That, and maybe some seed investment :]

markbao• 18 years ago

I'm Mark Bao, 16, owner of Avecora and coder and all that, and my parents are highly against, extremely unsupportive of coding/business/entrepreneurship. I'm guessing that it's a result of my lack of focus towards (high) school.

My reasons for doing this kind of thing early:

1) The people. Like eisokant said, networking is extremely important and I take it seriously.

2) The experience. I'm not getting a huge amount of business experience from this, but it's still valuable to learn about.

3) Make some money to re-invest into future things.

All are hard to do and are important problems. Unfortunately, I've been unable to network around here due to location (Boston = sucky networking compared to the Bay Area) and time. And, of course, my parents are anti-supportive of it, so it's tough to find time to work and code amidst their demands and school.

andreyf2• 18 years ago

I think it's an age/cultural thing. Same story here, but with my grandmother. She is a professor at Moscow State U, and is very saddened that I'm not going the respectful and institutionalized route of academia. To her, entrepreneurship is something for selfish people.

ucdaz• 18 years ago

Ok forks! This is how I convinced my parents. I told them since I don't have a mortgage, wife, kids, and other financial burdens, this is the perfect time for me to go off to work on my own projects. Even if I fail, I at least know I tried and have experience for the next gig. Life is short, and it's too easy to fall into the daily grind of working in the office. Hence, if I don't try, it will be harder for me to follow my dreams when I'm older. This is the Valley for heaven's sake! Where expression, art, and science can become a reality. Voila! They were sold!

andreyf2• 18 years ago

I'm 22, just finished school, and my parents completely lack opinion in regard to anything I want to do. They're supportive whenever I need their help in any way, but as long as I was finishing college, they haven't really been interested in what exactly I'm doing professionally.

hbien• 18 years ago

Very supportive, but I finished college first and then transitioned from intern to full time at work. My last day of work is in two days and then I'm bootstrapping a business.

If I dropped out of college to start a business, I'm pretty sure my parents would kill me.

a-priori• 18 years ago

First, I'm 23 (as of today) and my parents were the ones who first got me started on computers at about age 6. Neither of them are big geeks, but my dad is a draftsman and has used computers at his work since CAD became popular in the early 90s.

He also tried to start his own business when I was a kid. Unfortunately it flopped, taking a huge chunk of money with it. It took years for my parents to recover from that, and they didn't have much money to begin with. My dad has never attempted another business, but I think he regrets that.

That must be where I got the entrepreneurial bug from. When I suggested that I want to start my own business, my dad was supportive but wary, and my mum was wary but supportive, if you get what I'm saying. I can't fault either of them, because they've always supported me in everything I've done.

Money is always a sticky point with them, so I had to convince them that I had some idea what I was doing and that there was relatively little risk. Now is the time I can do risky stuff like this. The worst that could happen, I argued, is that I lose a few months of my life and living expenses for that time.

It turned out that's what did happen, and now I'm in a sticky position of trying to find a summer job in May, when no one wants to hire me for just 4 months (now 3.5). I'm returning to school in September to finish my undergrad. I don't consider my first startup attempt a failure, because I've learnt a lot.

The whole time, my parents have been supportive of the idea, but very concerned about money. I know I impressed them with how long I could survive on the money I had -- I definitely learnt how to live ridiculously cheap.

Ask YC: To The Young, How Supportive Are Your Parents?

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