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Founder Readiness 73

forward? Your stance on these issues will frame your planning process
and, more important, drive the sense of purpose and energy you bring
to your founding role.

FAMILY SUPPORT AND ALIGNMENT – How aware are family members or sig-
nificant others of your plans for the new venture and what it will require? How
supportive (confident, committed) are your family/significant others of this
new venture? Who else are you counting on to support this venture? What is
their level of support or resistance?

I include in “family” any loved ones or significant others who are
a consistent, important part of your life. The most common cases are
husbands and wives and children, who inevitably bear some of your
startup sacrifice and stress. I know of quite a few promising businesses
that were abandoned because the founder’s family was not adequately
prepared for the stress or the risk associated with entrepreneurship.
On the other side of the coin are people who achieve their startup
goals but at a dramatic and painful cost. Tim Berry, founder of Palo
Alto Software and bplans.com, has written, “Every class in entrepre-
neurship should have at least one session with somebody who got so
obsessed with the business that they lost the rest of their life. It hap-
pens a lot.”11

Typically, this is an area full of entrepreneurial selling and sugar-
coating. You want your family members to believe in what you are
doing, to have confidence in your new venture and the future you are
making possible, and, of course, you want to minimize their anxiety
about risks and challenges of entrepreneurship. But the realities and
requirements of your new venture will quickly make their presence
felt in your home, whether or not you prepare your family for them.
Spouses caught unaware by financial crises and unexpected late nights
at the office are much more likely to resist or panic than those who
are looped in and consulted on the front end. So it’s vital that you have
honest and realistic conversations with family members about how
the startup will affect or change your availability and schedule, how
it will affect financial priorities, and how risks and challenges will be
handled along the way. This includes listening closely to family mem-
bers’ concerns and fears and discussing how they can provide help

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