Married Entrepreneurs With Children

A number of you have already sent us emails about how having children ads another layer of complexity into the entrepreneurial challenge. We decided early in our life together not to have kids, so it’s hard for us to talk personally about the impact of them on a Startup Marriage, but many of our friends who are entrepreneurial couples have children.  We are reaching out to some of them to include their thoughts on this blog and in our book.

In the meantime, one of our readers from Chile sent us some of his story.  He is recently married and has a two year old with his wife. Following are some of his thoughts:

My biggest motivation to start a company was my daughter. When I knew that my wife (in that time my girlfriend) was pregnant, I was just 20 years old and thought that had to do something to make money, change my life for the better and actually change my style of life if I wanted to become a successful dad, husband and person. So, that’s why I started my own company.

My biggest challenge on being an entrepreneur and my relationship is to unify two worlds, that sometimes (and in my case, all the time) doesn’t fit that well. This is because my wife doesn’t think that been an entrepreneur is something good, so when I started she always tried to destroy my ideas and projects. Now that I’m earning money and getting more exposure in Chile, she is really happy and proud, but was extremely tough when you are just getting things rolling.

The second biggest challenge is being a dad (with a little kid), and try to support your wife, pay all the bills at home, get people to aprove your project, products or ideas, being a friend….it’s like I felt sometimes like superman or tried to be one. So people start blaming on you, telling you that they need more time, but your dreams and goals also need them, specially when you’re just starting, so it’s kind of challenging in those terms.

We know that kids add significant complexity into the entrepreneurial mix and we’ll be sure to explore this in depth.