Startups are hard →

Awesome read, but I especially love the part about sacrifice. As someone who has the fortune to work for an established web marketing company, I don't know a damn thing about sacrifice like this:

Startups demand sacrifice. As a sample size of two, here is a list of things my wife and I have sacrificed in order to go out and chase the American Dream:

• My well-salaried corporate job working on fun and interesting problems.
• A peer group at work that gave me equal amounts of respect even though I was several years their junior.
• Low cost of living on the East Coast.
• Our three-story townhouse with a huge kitchen and hardwood floors in the 'burbs traded in for a tiny one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco with insane rent (in addition to still paying the mortgage on our house).
• My awesome sports car that I loved to drive around the mountains.
• Burning through nearly all of our personal savings.
• Health insurance.
• Vacations (read: time-off, since I could still travel around if I really wanted to, but I am never really "off the clock.")
• Monthly contributions to a 401k plan.
• Our great church home in Raleigh.
• My wife's friends.
• My wife's job at UNC.
• Nine months living separated from my wife while I went through YC and tried to raise money thereafter.
• Sold all of our belongings except our clothes so we could move across the country.
• Took on credit card debt for the first time in our lives.
• Left my funk band (happily, they found a replacement and are still jamming!).
• Losing my hair (well ok, this has been happening for a while...).

It all reminds me of Snoop Dogg's album titled "Paid Tha Cost to Be Da Boss".

– Via Paul

# | 05/02/2011 7:33 a.m.