Startups & husband / wife teams

Is a husband and wife team good for a startup? Start up blog can’t answer that question. Theres enough examples of both faliure and success with such teams that I think it ‘depends’.

What startup blog can say is this:

In this situation there are really 2 startups.

  1. the marriage (already hard enough)
  2. the startup (also quite difficult)

I think the first startup should be the priority, if that rolls well maybe can engage on startup number two.

lois-and-peter

If startup number one suffers because of startup number two. Then startup number two should be exited, to refocus on startup number one. It’s a matter of priority and no amount of business success can replace a miserable existence at home and in personal relationships.

10 thoughts on “Startups & husband / wife teams

  1. An interesting topic to discuss. My wife Jodie and I are both heavily involved in Shoes of Prey (http://www.shoesofprey.com). I love her and I love working with her. Aside from having her incredible talents being used for the benefit of the business, one of the biggest benefits as I see it is we get to spend a lot of time together. A startup takes up a hell of a lot of your time, to the detriment of other areas of your life. With both of us involved in the business working on the startup isn’t to the detriment of our marriage. If it was just one of us involved in the business then we’d struggle to spend as much time together.

    The downside of this is that having a conversation that doesn’t involve the business is tricky, so we have to work on switching off sometimes. All in all though it’s working really well for us.

  2. Michael, I really interesting perspective of getting more time with each other, I like it. I’m glad it works for you… personally I’ve never tried it. There are enough examples of it working… I’ll be interested to hear what other people’s experience is as well.

    Steve.

  3. Have worked with my husband in a supply arrangement and it has worked well. I would need printing for a client and he would print it to a very high standard and on time. Did I mention OR ELSE!! =) Lol.

    We haven’t worked in the same business but we do often talk work stuff to find other solutions or approaches. He is great at cutting through to the heart of the matter while I can help with developing alternative ways of achieving the required outcomes.

    I can’t even imagine how it would work if we had our own business but I know we could make it work

  4. I would find it hard working with my wife, not impossible – I always keep business separate from our relationship its something that I have done all my life – there again in your article dated the 6th November I said that I will recommend your site to a husband and wife team (my only friends Maggie and Darren) not really, I’m only kidding. Personally speaking working with my wife errrrm ——-would blow my socks off. regards Dape

  5. Very interesting topic, something I’ve discussed with my wife before. Sounds like you might be interested in checking out our blog – husbandveruswife.com. We’re crowdsourcing relationship advice – letting readers decide who’s right and wrong in our marital disagreements 🙂

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