Reply to Husband wants to take a huge paycut to join a startup

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a spouse who works in tech startups and has for 15 years+.  Some things to think about.

-He will have insane hours.  It's the culture.  Most others in the company will be in their 20s and this won't be a problem for them.  No one will care that he has a wife and kids.
-Zero job security.  Zero.  Could get fired on a Tuesday.
-A lot of startups fail.  The percentage that end up getting sold and making equity partners a good deal of money is pretty slim.  10 percent of anything but a fairly big number isn't much.
-What is the health insurance situation?  Health insurance for a family of 5 isn't cheap and if I was you, one of my biggest concerns would be stable health insurance for your family.  Depending on the size of the startup and where they are as a company, they might not offer great family plans.  They're probably dealing with a lot of singles, which is a different market.

My advice is plan out the worst case scenario with him and make sure you can live with it.  The worst case is you spend down all your savings and in 3 years he has a 100k salary and you have no savings.  What happens then?  What happens if he gets let go?  Just work out your contingency scenarios and maybe you'll feel better.

Good luck.  If they've got the bug to go this route, not much you can do about it.  I only have 2 kids, but the way I sleep at night is I have a very stable job and I am the stable and steady presence in our family income and carry our health insurance.  But I understand that might not be possible for everyone.

[/quote]
This is good advice.  I would be a bit uncomfortable spending $50K to redo a basement in the first two years of the startup. Wait till the third year to see where the startup is at.  The payoff of a startup is very attractive. That's why people do it for way less money, and work insane hours. I had the opportunity to work for a startup but passed on it because I didn't want to work those hours (and I was single back then). The startup got bought out, but [b]no one except the executives made money out of the buyout.[/b][/quote]

That is always true, and I think people here are assuming OP's DH is on the executive team and getting equity in the company at the get-go. If you don't hold significant equity, you won't be cashing out on the buy out. Also, the executives are often bound by the buy out contract to work for the new company, which sometimes involves relocation, so that is another thing to consider.[/quote]

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