13 Ways Launching A Start-up is Like Having A Baby and 4 more...

A lovely post from Holly Hamann - with some great points - to which I add a view more... The absurd number of ways that running a start-up is like having a baby. 

Here are her top thirteen:

1. The idea to have a baby, or quit your job to launch a start-up during a recession, usually has something to do with tequila.
2. Nausea is the first sign that you are pregnant or have agreed to join a start-up.
3. The vomiting eventually stops in the 2nd trimester, or when you release your beta version, whichever comes first.
4. You are for sure pregnant (or are a co-founder in a start-up) when your partner now owns half of everything that gets produced.
5. You will be sleep-deprived until the baby is sleeping thru the night or you’ve hired someone to handle customer support, whichever comes first.
6. The average birth costs about $50,000 depending on your health insurance policy and PR agency fees.
7. You’ll resist the urge to rip a total stranger’s kidney out thru their left nostril when they tell you your baby is ugly or that your interface doesn’t conform to the latest UI/UX standards. Even if they’re right.
8. It is inevitable that your baby will make a mistake that lands you above the fold on your industry's most popular publication and gets virally propagated across every social network. You will be subject to much public humiliation and embarrassment until another start-up makes a bigger blunder.
9. Plan to fork over an allowance and expect nothing in return. Somewhere between $10 to $100,000 per month, depending on the economy and the cost of a movie-sized box of Milk Duds.
10. Expect to be infinitely patient as your baby (and start-up) experiments with its identity and then eventually grows up to be something far removed from what you originally planned.
11. You will spend the next 10 years teaching your baby, and your start-up, how to earn money on its own.
12. You will instantly forget how much pain you went thru the moment your baby is acquired by a search engine giant for $230 million dollars. 
13. Despite being broke, exhausted, aged, and divorced, you will decide to do it all over again.

Here are mine: 

1. I had my first baby / start up when I was 17 - which is probably a little too early.

2. Some people have them as soon as the leave university with people they met at university. 

3. Having three partners when making a baby / start up is always trickier and less fun than it sounds. 

4. And a very controversial one - and probably where the simile breaks down like it does for Holly on number 12... I have adopted two start ups but in the end the most successful ones were ones I gave birth to. But perhaps not the ones I loved the most (very controversial as I am adopted.) 

5. Once you have had one, you are pretty much hooked and your life never goes back to 'normal' and you wonder what does everyone else do with all that spare time ;) 

And 15 more that are much cooler than my 5 but some are similar ... by Neil MacGregor

1. They keep you up at night
2. Kiss your time-off goodbye
3. Someone always has to do the dirty work
4. You regularly find yourself up to your elbows in shit
5. You better love your cofounder(s)
6. They are lots of fun
7. They start in moments of passion and foolishness
8. You spend more time than you’d like to admit wondering if they were a good idea.
9. Everyone has opinions on how to run them
10. You’re bound to screw up the first one
11. The more you have, the easier it gets
12. They are much more expensive then you’d expect
13. They grow and hopefully won’t need you anymore
14. You celebrate the little achievements while focusing on the outcome.

And like my dad always says…

15. Just when you can’t stand it anymore, they change.