Hunters and Farmers: How to Build a Successful Relationship as You Build a Company
Five months ago, I planned to move to Colombia and travel the world with my fiance. Today, I’m single and living with my parents.
The breakup was devastating. It felt like my arm had been ripped off, come to life, and started punching me in the face.
The worst part was that I hadn’t seen it coming. The warning signs had been there, but I had lied to myself and told myself we could work through it.
And the fact of the matter is, I think a lot of it had to do with me starting a company, and all of the pain and hardship that came along with that.
It’s not that things are harder than I thought they’d be (although that’s definitely part of it), it’s that things are harder in different ways than I’d imagined. I expected long hours. I expected to be told no hundreds of times and continue going.
I wasn’t expecting it to cause so many problems in my relationships.
At heart, I’m an optimist. Even after getting punched in the face repeatedly, I still believe deep down that a healthy relationship is possible as a founder.
And I believe that my pain and my failed relationship can shine some light on how to avoid some of the inevitable problems that will arise in a relationship with a founder.
With honest communication, healthy boundaries, and realistic expectations, you can build a healthy relationship at the same time you’re building a company.
First, it’s important to understand the founder’s mindset and how it differs from that of nonfounders. It comes from a deep place in the human psyche and traces its roots to the foundations of civilization and ancient human history.
Some people are hunters and some people are farmers.
Hunters vs Farmers
Hunters chase large, irregular rewards, whereas farmers are content with small, regular rewards.
Ancient hunters would probably travel for weeks without eating very much at all, chasing something in the savannah. They wouldn’t be able to outrun their prey (humans aren’t especially fast runners), but they would be able to outlast their prey (humans are especially good long runners). Eventually the prey would get tired and slow down, and the hunters would be able to catch them. The hunters might have been running on very little food, running for weeks, feeling a lot of pain and discomfort.
They would eventually kill something huge, and they would be able to eat like kings.
Farmers grow crops with an expected output at an expected regularity. There might be especially bad harvests or especially good harvests, but it’s unlikely a farmer would ever starve to death. Hunters probably did starve to death sometimes.
It’s possible that the large game hunters killed, more than they could ever possibly eat, helped get ancient humans through their winters. You have good food to eat over the winter, and you can stay in one place long enough to build a solid foundation. You don’t need to keep wandering with the seasons.
Some people are hunters, and some people are farmers. The hunters see the large game in the distance and say, “I think I can catch that. It will take a lot of work, and the hunt will come with long periods of pain and hunger, but I want to run after it. I want to eat meat.”
The farmers are more risk-averse and prefer stability and comfort to the potential for large rewards.
Founders are hunters. Nonfounders are farmers.
Startups as the Modern Hunt
Founders are insane. You need to be comfortable getting hundreds of nos before you get that single yes. You need to wake up every day and face the death of your company. You need to be comfortable putting payroll on your credit card and not paying yourself for months.
I’ve recently spoken to several founders who told me basically the same thing. One runs a successful startup, and he told me that he didn’t pay himself for three years and lived on about $20 of food per week, working odd jobs to bring in some side income to keep the dream alive.
One founder runs a company that’s recently gotten some investment and has made its way into some popular headlines with some big deals. And he and his wife are on food stamps!
In 2023, 3200 startups have gone out of business, with more than a handful having raised over $100M.
But we wake up every day and we do it all over again, sometimes making slow progress, sometimes making what feels like no progress at all. Because we see the large game in the distance and we say to ourselves,
“Yeah. I can keep running for a little longer. I’m hungry, and I’m tired, but I can keep running. I’m getting closer.”
What This Means for Relationships
To keep a relationship alive while you’re ‘on the hunt,’ you need to have honest conversations. You need to set healthy boundaries. You need to set realistic expectations.
I don’t blame myself or my ex for our failed relationship. I think it would have been impossible to have an honest conversation as I was starting the company up. I didn’t know what I was getting into. (And sometimes I wonder if I would have done it if I had known what I was getting into).
But if you’re considering starting a company, and you’re in a relationship, and you’re reading this, I want to encourage you to think deeply about what you’re getting into. You might need to go six months or more without income. You will probably need to work a dayjob as you’re getting started and work on your startup on nights and weekends.
And how will you make quality time for your relationship? How will the two of you deal with the money stress of it all?
If you’ve already started a company and you’re reading this, I would encourage you to keep the following things in mind:
You’re ‘On a Hunt,’ But You Should Periodically Farm Too
Being a hunter doesn’t mean you need to constantly be hunting. Continuing with the metaphor, you can be chasing a giant beast, and even get close, but before you starve to death you might want to catch a rabbit and return to base camp to rest.
What that means for a startup: When you’re starting up, for the first year or two, it’s more like a 24/7 than a 9 to 5. But that’s not sustainable for you. Even during that first year or two, set some rigid boundaries around work/life balance. Take Sundays completely off work. End work at 5pm on Wednesdays. Use these periods to give yourself a break and give your partner quality time.
And you should build in periods where you try to mimic a 9 to 5 as much as possible.
That means drawing a salary, starting your day at 9, ending your day at 5, and not working on the weekends. That’s likely not sustainable for your company for longer than 3–4 months at a time either, but if you burn out, that’s not sustainable for your company either. Consider that period as a ‘break’ (even though you’re now working a 9 to 5). This is a period to give your partner a lot of quality time. Go on dates. Plan romantic surprises. Close your laptop after 5pm as often as possible and be present.
Communicate When You Need to Disappear
One of my biggest regrets of my last relationship is bringing my partner to my Techstars program. I participated in Techstars Tulsa Summer 2023 with eleven other companies.
There were around 15 other founders with me in the program, and not a single other one brought their partner with them. At first, I felt lucky that my partner would pick up and move her life with me to Tulsa, but soon I felt split between two worlds that were in direct conflict.
I was deep in the hunt. I was sprinting and running for days, closing in on my prey.
One of the other founders in the program described it as a bootcamp. We were there for three months to work on our startups. That had to be the number one priority.
I think our relationship might have had a better chance if I had told her, “I love you. But I need to go to Tulsa by myself. It’s just for three months, and we can make plans to see each other during that time. But while I’m there, the startup needs to be my number one priority.”
I was not a good partner in Tulsa. I didn’t do much cooking or cleaning. I worked long hours. I was exhausted. I was agitated, irritable, and nervous. At some points, I was probably unpleasant to be around.
Set Boundaries
You need to set boundaries around both your work and your relationship. You might want to set one night a week as date night. No matter what’s happening with the startup, you’ll show up and be present. You could be getting angry customer emails or get a call from an investor you’ll be courting — it doesn’t matter, you will be able to deal with it the next morning.
To be clear, I didn’t do this and wish I had.
Your startup is important, but you need to do things to communicate that your partner is more important.
On the other hand, you should feel comfortable putting boundaries up in the other direction. You might want to set the expectation that 9–5 you won’t be able to talk or interact much because you’re heads down. You might want to treat it like going to the office. Better yet, you might want to get an office space so there’s a physical separation.
Set boundaries that make sense for you and your partner and stick to them.
Honest Communication
Anything but complete honesty will build resentment. And it needs to go both ways.
My failed relationship died a death by a thousand cuts, but I think I can trace its core issues to one moment where we didn’t have complete honesty.
I was facing some rising bills and was considering taking out a loan. Because of the nebulous nature of tech startups, a business loan was out of the question. It had to be a personal loan.
I asked her if she’d be comfortable if I took out a loan. She said she would be.
I hadn’t been completely honest, and neither had she. I hadn’t lied about wanting to take out a loan, but in retrospect, I should have sat down with her, opened up my finances, showed her the different loans I was looking at, and done the math with her on income vs savings vs monthly payments. I hadn’t done that. It was a lie by omission. I was worried if I had showed her all the tiny details of the loan, she would say she wasn’t comfortable with it.
And even with my lie by omission, she lied about being comfortable with it. Or maybe in the abstract, in that moment she was comfortable with it, with the idea of it. But when it became concrete, when I had taken out the loan, and when it started to affect our finances, she wasn’t comfortable with it. And she continued to say that she was comfortable with it.
Had we been honest with each other, I think it’s possible the relationship would have ended right then and there, nearly a year sooner than it actually ended.
And that might have been for the best.
It’s Not for Everyone
The startup life is one of risks and uncertainty. It’s a constant rollercoaster. Things can be going fantastic one day and horrible the next, or those shifts can even happen within one day.
It’s hard. Everyone says it’s hard, and you probably have an idea of how hard it is, but it’s harder than that.
It’s almost always uncomfortable. It’s frequently painful. It’s sometimes rewarding.
And even with all of that, and all of the work, and time, and effort, and lost sleep over the startup, there’s always a very real chance that it’ll never work out.
The good outcomes are unlikely.
And just like if you’re selling something, it’s not for everybody. If you’re a butcher, even if you have the best meat in the world, the finest cuts, the highest grade wagyu beef, at the best prices, you will waste your time if you try to sell it to vegans.
Sometimes, a thing can be good. And it can end. And the fact that it ends doesn’t take away from the fact that it was good.
The same is true for relationships.
As I look back on my failed relationship, I remember the good.
Here are a few good stories that I remember:
- We bought a nice bottle of wine and held onto it for more than a year before we spontaneously opened it, put on our fanciest clothes, and ate paté and olives in our living room. Then we danced to silly music.
- We found a way to have fun doing boring things, like running errands. I remember driving through the Home Depot parking lot multiple times for no reason laughing like a bunch of goofballs.
- There was a long period of time when I woke up feeling excited and lucky to be able to spend time with her. To walk around with her, talk to her, and laugh with her.
Being a founder has been one of the hardest, most painful, most stressful experiences of my life. And I can’t imagine doing anything else.
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