Starting a website is not like having a baby
My friend Sachin, the successful CEO of this very website you're reading now, recently posted his reflections on the similarities between having a baby and starting a website. I love Sachin, and he makes some very valid points, but as a person who has recently had a child (and has never, in the interest of full and fair disclosure, started an internet company) there are some key differences I must point out.
- Websites do demand constant maintenance. However, once you have wrapped up your work for the day and gone to bed, even if that's at 2 a.m., you will not suddenly be awoken 45 minutes later to a screaming server covered in feces.
- Your website won't die if you don't pull your boobs out and expose yourself every three hours, whether you're in public or not.
- A website will never vomit on your clothes, furniture, or other people's furniture.
- You don't lie in bed at night worrying that your website will grow up and hitchhike, hold up a liquor store, be hit by a bus, get pregnant at 16, appear on a reality show about getting pregnant at 16, have a trucker's name tattooed on her hip, ride motorcycles helmetless, get in cars with drunk drivers, join a cult, get depressed, get lupus, get herpes, smoke anything offered by a guy wearing leather sandals at a party, or make embarrassing YouTube music videos, please God, don't let her make YouTube music videos.
- No state agency will come and take your website away if it turns out that you really, really suck at running one. (Actually, maybe that's not true.)
- Starting a company sharpens your brain and makes you smarter. It's a thing you can put on a resume. Having a baby results in you nodding along sleepily during dinner parties with intelligent adults, hoping that the conversation will eventually come around to the plotline of "Mog the Forgetful Cat" and you will have something to say.
- Selling your website results in plaudits and a write-up in Business Week. Try to sell your baby - even for a very high price - and suddenly everyone's a Judgmental Judy.
- A website never demands that you stop what you're doing and breastfeed. Hold on a second.
- Having a baby also makes you flabby, pale and out of shape. That part is the same.
- To the best of my knowledge, no website launch has ever required an episiotomy.
Posted on Friday, Apr 22, 2011
