Anyone else here bootstrapping with kids?

I started my company when my son was 6 months old. It was a bit crazy, but I figure I'd rather spend time building a product and company I'm passionate about rather than working on someone else's idea. And if I didn't do it then, it wasn't going to get any easier (I'm a believer in little kids, little problems... big kids, bigger problems). So here we are, over a year into bootstrapping and my 2-year old interrupts about 50% of the meetings I take from home :). But I'm loving it!

3 kids here. Couldn't do it without my wife.

BTW, hilarious tweet from @rosiesherry:

It is hard. Most of the time I only have 1hr/day to work on my side project. It's enough though. I'd rather enjoy time with my kids while I can. 13 years have gone by fast enough. I want to cherish every moment I can.

All it means is that I move slower. A trade off well worth the gains.

Signing off now. Going to spend a few minutes with them before they go to sleep.

5 kids, neurodiversity challenges, unschoolers. 15 years indie hacking. One 7 figure business (still own but I don’t run day to day), turned indie creator.

It’s great that kids are more accepted these days, it was never like that pre-covid.

As a woman in tech in tech in the early days I felt like I had to hide the fact that I had kids. Potential employers ghosted me all the time when they found out I had kids.

Trying to! I have two young boys and up until mid-2021 I worked Full time AND tried to work on my own projects. It is NOT easy and it can cause a LOT of strife between you and your spouse/partner if they don't understand why you are doing the indiehacking and what the outcome will be/is, and how it benefits the family as a whole.

TL;DR: Indie hacking with kids can be great! But you really have to be self-disciplined and show love and gratitude along the journey or you risk alienating the people you love most.

If you are not disciplined and don't set boundaries, you will wind up forgoing sleep, fun, and family time. None of which is a good thing. It will destroy relationships if you let it. You will think it doesn't/won't but but it will - if you let it. Set boundaries, block out SMALL amounts of time each day to indiehack, focus on family, focus on your kids, make sure they know why you spend "a couple hours a day on your computer". Make sure they know what you're trying to accomplish really is for the whole family and not just a selfish pursuit.

If you aren't careful, you'll look back after 12 years fly by and think "How the F did I miss them grow up into little men?". Don't let this happen. You will regret it and the business you build/fail will not be worth the lost time.

Some tips I wish I had followed much sooner:

1. Make sure you are setting equal or (preferably) MORE time to spend with your kids and spouse than you do on your projects.

2. Make sure you miss LESS family outings/time than you do coding sessions.

3. Make sure you tell your spouse EVERY DAY how much you appreciate him/her stepping up when you don't.

4. Get used to less sleep and more focused coding sessions so you get stuff done.

5. Get up 2 hours earlier or stay up 2 hours later than everyone else and get sh!t done while everyone in the house is asleep: coding, laundry, meal prep, dishes, dusting, sweeping, todo lists, grocery shopping, clean the bathrooms - whatever needs to be done, do it when it won't affect your time with family/kids.

6. Push out an MVP of your project WAY BEFORE you think it looks good to test the market and traction so you don't work on a doomed project for years and sacrifice your time with your family for too long. If you don't gain traction, LET GO OF THE PROJECT AND MOVE ON. Move on to a new idea, or move on from dreaming about being an indy hacker. Make the decision and stick to it so you don't spend endless months/years cheating your kids out of your time.

7. Set SMALL daily goals for accomplishing thing on your project, and walk away when you've knocked the tasks off the to-do list or get stuck for too long and need a clear head.

8. VERY IMPORTANT: Do NOT do what I did and pull multiple all-nighters per week for months or years with the false belief that there is not enough time to build your project. Not only will you burn out or cause yourself health problems, you will be a miserable prick around your family and you do not want your kids to see this behavior or resent you. You do not want to antagonize your spouse if they are covering your slack while you "chase your dream".

There is no rush, consistently showing up every day - even for an hour - adds up more than you think. One hour per day = 365 hours of work towards your project per year. You can knock out a few MVPs per year at that rate.

9. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Every. Single. Day. Spend time with your kids and make sure they understand that you love them and that they are the center of your world. Invite them into your hobbies - coding a project? teach them how to code their own. Jump fully into their hobbies - hate playing with dolls? Tough sh!t, they're only this age once, play with them. Take bike rides, walks, hikes, play a sport. Have multiple kids? Have one-on-one time for an hour per week with each.

Make sure they know that when you're in your office that it means you're working. BUT if they interrupt you to play, take a break and play with them. Make sure they never doubt that they are your most important "thing". Never let them feel second fiddle to your side project.

10. Spend time with your spouse. Focus on their stresses and make it VERY clear that you understand the additional strain you might be causing them when you work on your side project. Your project will : consume your mind space, frustrate you to no end, make you miserable, destroy your sleep patterns, take you mentally and physically away from your family, make you forget stuff, and much more. It is important that you acknowledge that this causes more to be put on your spouse's shoulders and causes him/her more stress they did not ask for nor want. Acknowledge this, try harder, be a rock they can depend on. Minimize stresses elsewhere for them. ( I am awful at all of this, but I know it's what my wife wants and needs from me).

Hope some of this is helpful to someone.

Check out https://www.indiedads.com/ by @InquisitorJax @PocketBryan

👋
Lots of parents outed themselves in the comment section:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/can-i-still-indie-hack-with-two-infants-941501b308

👋 👨👧👶👩

One kid here. I quit my 50-60 hour per week corporate job to be able to pursue my passion indie hacking but also to spend more time with my daughter. I actually work more hours now, but have the flexibility to be home when she gets off the bus and coach her soccer team.

If you think bootstrapping with kids is complicated, try with teenagers 😂

2 kids. God bless my wife.

yup, 10 months old baby. started my own business shortly before being pregnant. stopped a year. now trying to get back to where i left off, with

• less time per week (3 instead of 5 days)
• less hours per day (7 per day instead of the whole day)
• less sleep (3 x 3 hours in a row max. per night instead of 1 x 8-9 hours)
• and having to do some part-time gigs to get paid so that i can pay the daycare instead of going all in and having no risk so that i could live without earning any money for quite some time.

what a ride haha 🎢

Nope, but most of the IHs I know do. Not a clue how you all do it.

Especially in the early stages. Waking up at 2am to feed the kid + working on a business solo.

Yes! Twins over here (4 years old today 🎉).

I set up my project 12 months ago. Found an awesome marketing/sales cofounder, and we just passed $20k/mo.

It's been super tough managing the workload. My wife has been so supportive and I couldn't have done it without her.

I am "that dad" who sits at the side of his kids swimming lessons with a laptop smashing out tasks. Noise and background interruptions have never been an issue (not that they don't happen, just that people accept them).

I love my kids and I love startup challenges and in fact life in general. I just wish my next startup creates a watch that stops time!!

The best advice I have read in a while, thank you!

2 kids, 2.5yo and 6 weeks.
I try to spend the maximum of my time with them. But I'm not going to lie, it's intense.

Currently, my schedule looks like this:
4 am wakeup to get some focus work done,
7:30 am wake family for cuddles and breakfast,
9 am drop daughter off at Kindergarten
9:15-12:30 another work block
12:30-1:30p help wife with the kids, sometimes lunch
1:30-4p another work block
afterward family time, so walks, mountains, beach, etc..
7p bath and prepping the kids for bed
8p wife and kids go to sleep
8-9:30p reading, studying, side projects

But that's just the ideal, and can work really well. But we all know it's messier than that, but also a lot of fun. As you said, "enjoy the interruptions", and that's exactly how I see it. I can't believe how big our daughter is already, time flew by so fast..

I have a bootstrappers community and I noticed that many of the members have kids, so it is definitely not impossible. I recently interviewed Kevon who just had a new born and we spoke a bit about he is able to organize his time. Might be interesting for you

Yes, it's a familiar problem. Working remotely with a young child is a real challenge. I even wrote an article about it: https://medium.com/@kolosowdima/6-reasons-why-i-hate-working-remotely-24b455ef3ade

3 kids here. No way I could do it without a partner.

Two kids - three and four. I try and think/code in the morning now - too much brain fog in the evening! Once you accept that things are just going to move slowly for a while it's all good :)

With a full time job, a kid and a wife I've fully committed myself to fact that my side hustle is last priority. I have lumped working on my idea into my 'me time', but I refuse to let it invade other parts of my life.

Homeschooling during lockdown was tough going!

Yup, It's not easy. There is always something else to do and I've struggled at times giving enough time to my family. These days I sacrifice more of my indie hacking to try and make sure that doesn't happen.

I like bootstrapping with kids but hate that you can't usually push them to work the full 8 hours.

2 kids, 2 months and 3 years old.
Bootstrapping as a side project. Huge thanks to my wife who tries to make me dedicate some time to work on the project. And it's super hard to keep up with my-cofounders who don't have kids. It's stressful and tense. But seeing what we've done makes me motivated.

Here! 2 small girls (4 years and 8 months), and, moreover, my bootstrap is a sideproject.

Sometimes I feel like I'm going to die early, some others is all pure love.

It's like being bipolar but full of lithium.

Only 1 kid, but she is <2 years old. Since having her, I think it helps me focus better on my work (when I can 😅)

Me knowing that I have a certain amount of time to work, makes me work more effectively during that time.

PS: As I write this comment, she is screaming in the background :-)

🖐️ a 9 year old.

👧 & 👦 here, so glad for everyone sharing their story here. Part of leaving my corporate PM job was to show my kids that you don't have to sit in front of zoom for 9 hours and call it a job. The last two years of the pandemic have been hard on folks, but I am appreciative of it as it WOKE me up.

Opposite of what you are asking - but wanted to share: I initially started down the bootstrapping path, but opted to take VC money specifically so I could better support my family. It of course comes with risks and more professional stress, but the VCs I took on are fantastic and the money allows me to take a small salary.

I started building Boondockers Welcome while on maternity leave with my first, launched it (very late!) while on leave with my second. (NB: I sold it last year!) I quit my day job less than a year after going back, and then spent my next 10 years trying to reconcile the competing identities of being an indiehacker and a stay-at-home mom -- both seemed to define me but also left out so much.

I love seeing more people talk now about not just bootstrapping with kids, but also being the primary caregiver while their kids were young and bootstrapping at the same time. For me, the flexibility of not having the day job was a huge push for me to try and make my business work. Yes, it's infinitely harder with kids than it would be without, but I see my friends with kids and inflexible day jobs and am thankful every day that I made the choice I did.

2 kids. Very many late nights. Far easier now (9 and 13) than it was back in 2017!

Me! Father of two. Actually right now we have 2 holidays in the middle of the week and I had so many plans for this week. Had to postpone everything.

Madness here is thru the roof :)

And basically for that reason I don't record anything at all. Every time i try to record something – someone def-ly will poop themselves, break something or start crawling to forbidden precious things etc 😂

Best solution is to make the product FOR kids, after you strap their boots, you also bootstrap with them. That way you always have around you your target users, you can ask them questions, give them some QA tasks, or get feature requests. Can also be beneficial for marketing :-)

I have one baby, four months old. Doing my daily job from home, jumping in to help with the baby, and bootstrapping my side hustle.

Difficult, by step by step I am closer to the finish line. I like I can work from home and spend some time with a baby, watch how he is different every day.

Get up as much as early I can, at the same time save energy for the evening when it can drop very low. Getting out for a walk with a baby can give me energy portion.

Count me in!

5 y.o. + twins under 2 y.o.

In short: busy! 😅

Mother of 3 active boys here from 3-9. I only get an hour (sometimes none if the youngest doesn't nap) in the afternoon. And they sleep late so my work/me time starts late evenings. Wish I could control my time, so just making the most of what I get.

Ha. I was looking for a post like this.

I was bootstrapping The Crypto Journal with kids around - 2 of them. (https://thecryptojournal.substack.com/)

Doesn't actually work, only after I put them to bed.

I hope for you work.

I have bootstrapped one project and started another two haha - the first one I made the mistake of putting too much time into it, which I regret - but the net effect of that is that I now have a load of code / infrastructure I can leverage for my other projects and so spend less time on them :) swings / roundabouts

Yes since 2004 - https://manojranaweera.me/who-is-manoj-ranaweera

Youngest will turn 18 this year though. Actually started my founder journey a few months after she was born in 2004.

Yup 👋
Got a 7 year old son.
He's at the perfect age actually, not too young not too old. I spend quality time with him, while still get to work on my own thing.

I have been bootstrapping different companies for over 15 years now, the last 5 with kids. I have three daughters of 5, 2 and a little baby of 1 week old.

I guess I had to adjust a bit during the first couple of months as we changed our rhythm, for me it's really important to build your new structure around the structure that your kids need. So that means being there for breakfast and dinner, bring them to school, read before they go to bed, take them to sports etc. You then plan your work around those and only sparingly pull all nighters because that is very hard to combine in my experience, you just get way too tired to be the parent you want to be.

Actually for me it is a great way to take my mind of the business and enjoy the moment. There is still plenty of time to work on your ideas, you just have to plan a bit better for it I think.

My older one is 10 and younger one is 3. You know what - I absolutely love being able to work when kids are around.

It's once in a lifetime opportunity to watch them grow; and I won't trade that for anything. I've been remote ever since it wasn't cool to be remote (at least in my country) - by choice!

I think post COVID, background noises and disturbances are all normal. Everyone gets that.

I’m doing it now and it was much easier when they were toddlers. I have a pre-teen now that is full of activities that I have to cut back on time for my side project.

It’s all good and worth it in the long run I figure.

I am.
Sometimes they come in my workroom and ask if I need a break (... to play with 'em)!! Love these "breaks"!! :D

I am. Lots of interruptions from a little bundle of joy...