It’s been exactly one year since my last post on the struggles of running a startup while raising a family. I was burnt out and frustrated at the time. Things are much better now. By giving a little more background I hope this post can inspire others in similar situations to get their lives back in balance too.
It was the end of March and my life was a mess. I had just turned 31. A few days before that we had celebrated my daughter’s 1st birthday. My threenager was as wild as ever. The four of us were living in a 700sq ft condo in Waikiki. Kumu had officially launched the month before. The kids weren’t sleeping well at night. My wife and I barely had time to talk to each other. I hadn’t surfed in months. I was stiff, out of shape, grumpy, and exhausted.
And on March 27th this came in:
Kumu’s first enterprise contract! All ten thousand glorious dollars paid in full. For a bootstrapped startup just out of beta — that was huge!
There’s was only one small problem…
We didn’t have an enterprise version yet.
We’d been in talks with this potential enterprise client for a few months but the process kept getting hung up on who’s terms we would build the contract from and who’s approval was needed for the purchase. As the only developer in a team of two we couldn’t make enterprise a priority until we were confident the contract would come through.
Midway through March we sensed a bit of urgency we hadn’t picked up on in past talks. Apparently, due to the customer’s fiscal year they needed to pay by March 31st. Now — I know nothing about enterprise bureaucracy in general — but apparently that gave them a loop hole that allowed them to use a credit card instead of having to go through the full-blown procurement process. With the procurement process sidestepped it was clear this contract was going to move forward.
But there was one more catch: any purchases made using this magical credit card also had to be delivered by the end of the fiscal year as well.
So that left me with exactly two weeks to make Kumu Enterprise a reality.
I scraped together my list of notes strewn about our “Kumu enterprise” GitHub issue and got to work. I quickly became familiar with the ins-and-outs of Ubuntu 12.04, Packer, VirtualBox, chef, good old fashioned f**king shell scripts, and waiting 20 minutes between builds to see if my latest fixes actually fixed anything.
Thank god for GitHub Enterprise — if I didn’t have their help docs to serve as a guide to the obscure parts of building an enterprise appliance I never would have been able to build this in time. (Or pay our legal counsel $5k to essentially copy their license and swap our name in for theirs. But that’s another story.)
For those last two weeks of March I worked sun up till midnight, surviving only on coffee and meals my wife would drop on the desk of my home office. At the end of it all I finished with a 36-hour sprint (literally only getting up from my desk to use the bathroom) and made it with half a day to spare.
Or so I thought.
That was before I realized I had a 6-hour time difference working against me and before the oh-shit moment I had when I started uploading the 1gb machine image and could only get 80kb/s up. Apparently uploads can take a while from the middle of the pacific ocean. (And yes, I have a much faster internet plan now.)
But by the evening of March 31st it was all over. The upload had finished. The customer had confirmed delivery.
And I needed some sleep.
After a quick rest I remember waking up and feeling an overwhelming need to go for a run. I hadn’t run in ages but there was a heavy pressure on my chest I’d never felt before. I wanted to go back to sleep but I couldn’t. I remember hearing Alexi Murdoch’s song “Breathe” as I was heading out the door:
I ran for twenty minutes and couldn’t shake the “don’t forget … to breathe” line out of my head. I stopped at a deserted beach and remembered a breathing technique I had learned in Bikram yoga a few years back. As I was doing the breathing exercises a lot of thoughts were racing through my mind, but with each deep exhale my mind eased and the pressure on my chest faded away.
The whirlwind of thoughts soon cleared, leaving one crystal clear realization: no amount of money is worth sacrificing so much of yourself, your life, your friends, or your family. This was a wake up call to get my priorities squared away and get my life back in balance.
So that’s exactly what I did.
I stopped drinking coffee. I love my Kona coffee but it’s a dangerous addiction that sweeps very serious life imbalances under the rug. When you can only focus and be patient with caffeine coursing through your veins the answer is rest, not more coffee.
I cut my work day in half. Six solid hours of work is perfect. Instead of waking up and going straight to work I do puzzles with the kids or take them on a walk. I ride my bike to pick my son up from school in the afternoons. I used to always go back to work after a quick dinner with the family while my wife handled the bedtime routine — now I play boardgames, read bedtime stories and spend the evening relaxing with my wife (what’s left of it at least once the kids finally go the f**k to sleep).
I learned to prioritize. With half as much time, you must be twice as efficient. As Brett Martin said so eloquently “You do not have 20% time. Identify your top three priorities. Throw away numbers two and three.” I still mostly go by my gut on this one and would love any recommendations on tools or processes for organizing priorities.
I set aside time for my family. Monday evening is “mama monday” where my wife gets to surf Waikiki with her mama friends while me and the other dads watch the kids on the beach. Wednesdays I wrap up early so we can take the kids down to the BMX track.
I stopped working weekends. I don’t even check my email on weekends now. It was painfully clear that my son needs me around more. When it comes to kids it’s not enough to just be physically present, you need to be mentally present too.
I started surfing again. I’ve loved surfing ever since I got my first board when I was 10. I hand shaped a couple dozen boards in college. My senior project at Cal Poly was a CAD program for designing surfboards. Hell, we moved to Oahu so I could work for Aku Shaper and blend my love for surfing with my work. In the midst of Kumu’s launch and having kids I stopped setting aside time to get in the water. Now when the waves are up I drop everything and just go have some fun. The swell will be gone in a day or two and everything else can wait. I’m very lucky to have a cofounder / brother that not only tolerates this but understands and encourages it.
I chose to be present. One of the hardest things about startups is you’re always preoccupied with the shit you didn’t quite get to. To fight these distractions I started ending my work day by finding 3 jokes to tell my son over dinner. My memory is horrible so memorizing three of them is just enough to get my mind off work and ease me back into family life. This is one of his favorites:
What did the fish say when it ran into the wall? Dam!
My favorite is the one about how to drown a hipster.
A lot has changed in a year. The specific things I’ve done aren’t really important. What’s important is realizing things were broken and deciding to fix them. Actions not excuses was my motto.
And you know what? I think Kumu’s actually better for it. When you’re not so deep in the trenches you’re able to step back and see the big picture. You can focus on visionary ideas instead of a never-ending pipeline of incremental new features.
And you only need a few of those visionary ideas to be successful.
If you’re in a similar situation yourself or know somebody that is, please encourage them to make a change. Companies shouldn’t be able to wear you down to the bone and make up for it with high salaries and lavish perks.
