Why I won't encourage my children to be entrepreneurs

I was once miserable working for someone else, I'm not anymore.

I've also been miserable (at times) running a company.

Both sides of the coin can be hard, it's important to remember that.

I disagree with this. I will 100% encourage my kids to be entrepreneurs if it's something they want to do.

However, I would probably advise them to start out with side projects and gain work experience if it was a direction they wanted to go.

I do agree with you that relying 100% of your wellbeing on a startup can be very frustrating and difficult.

Why does it cause you unhappiness? I am more than happy waking up every day to talk to my clients and work on the features I want, on the products I love. Are you sure that the entrepreneurship is the problem?

I personally don't believe in encouraging my kids to pursue any career, it's far too early for them to know what they want to be. It's more important for them to develop interests, passions, skills and emotional maturity. Then they can pick their career paths later.

But I do think it's a good idea for them to be aware of potential career paths and pros/cons.

I do wish my parents had encouraged entrepreneurship, I never considered it an option until I was 37. But I'm not entirely sure I would have chosen it sooner, it took me 14 years of working for other people before I decided that wasn't for me.

Also, I'm not sure if this tweet refers to traditional vc-backed startups or indie hacking. Two very different animals.

I say this is a bad way to look at entrepreneurship. Pressure is what entrepreneurs run into constantly. If you feel like everything is going good and there is nothing wrong, you are probably not doing a good job. There is always room for improvement, always. Keep your head up and enjoy the grind.

I think it really depends on their personality and what they want. I think it's fair to give them warning and caution about the downsides and stresses of entrepreneurship, but there are also some wonderful upsides aside from becoming (maybe) rich. I would imagine being reasonable about the pros and cons is the way to go as with most things. However, I don't have children myself yet so what do I know 🤷‍♂️

As someone else here already said, one should not encourage kids to be something what they think they should be. They should encourage them to be what they have affinities and desire to be. Why would you push your kid to be a doctor? You and your father had been doctors is not good enough as a reason.

I find the tweet a bit cheesy. Difficulty and circumstances go hand by hand for everything in life, not just profession or work. It is difficult for some, so it might be difficult for you too, but also it's easy for some others! As for anything else in life.

I totally disagree with this. I will never encourage my son to work for someone else and work a miserable b.s. job and struggle like I had to do. Anything in life that is worth something of great value is going to require hard work.No one ever said this path was going to be easy.The satisfaction and happiness comes from the harvest .There is a saying in the Dominican Republic that Joe Santos from Coding Phase taught me "You can either be the hammer or you can be the nail! Which one are you?"

This seems to be a message from the deep of your heart.

I hope you could reread it again, smiling like never before and looking back on what you accomplished.

(Or after your 15km run - I know the feeling 😄)

Not to mention the example you have set for your children: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-many-children-do-you-have-99144d0716

Keep it up 🙌🏻🙏🏻