Win a little, lose a lot

Times were not always so rough, after several years of struggle in our twenties and thirties, we sold our first company for a million dollars.  We pocketed some cash and purchased a vacation home in Las Vegas (aka a house for my in-laws to live in).   

This is when we learned the first few lessons of starting a company.  One: always negotiate a release and non-compete.  This, we did not do and subsequently my husband was let go from the company he started, but was prohibited from working in the field for over a year.  Luckily we were able to continue living our lifestyle for a couple of years, but then the housing market crash came and our son was going to enter kindergarten.   

Living in San Francisco was fun and exiting as a childless couple, a little challenging after having a baby, and nearly impossible when we found out a second was on the way.  Driving around 20 minutes for a parking space at the supermarket got a little old when you ended up parking two blocks away with two kids in tow.  So with the mortgage looming and elementary school beckoning, we put our condo up for sale and moved to the suburbs.  This seemed like a great idea.  I knew that we would be facing a loss on the condo, but it seemed worth it because we would park it in the rental for a year or two and purchase a home …   

This turned out to be the worst idea ever.  The housing crisis got worse by the minute, and we sold our million dollar condo at an extreme loss, it was either that or go into foreclosure, but because of our little windfall, we would not have qualified for it.  So one year of roughing it in a rental turned into six years and counting.  Of course, in between the market recovered and skyrocketed into a stratosphere that has become untouchable for us to obtain.  Houses we made bids on five years ago, are now practically double.  In fact the shack that we are living in, we did make an offer on, for 1.4 million dollars.  1.4 million dollars with the idea of tearing it down and doing a million dollar remodel.  Our bid was rejected by the owner, citing tax write off reasons.  She couldn’t afford to by another house to write the taxes off.  The irony.

My million dollar shack

Some days you wake up and think this is the day you are going to be a millionaire, and then other days you feel that you’ll be living in this shack for the rest of your God forsaken life.  And by shack, I am referring to a $4,500 rental in the heart of Silicon Valley.  Everyone knows about the rise and fall of the housing market, but currently the Bay Area is on an astronomical rise with no end in sight.  By most accounts, our rental is a bargain, but by bargain I mean that $4,500 a month will get you a circa 1950, two bedroom, one bath, 1,800 square foot house with salmon paint peeling off the walls and a puke brown kitchen with a Jenn-Air four burner coil cooktop.  It is really quite mortifying when you step back and look at the situation, but when you are in it, you can justify it every which way.  Back in the hey-day when I cooking out with my six burner Thermador stove, I would mock my mom for being so loyal to those black coils, inconsistently heating up her stir-fries and eggs.   I honestly could not understand how anyone could succumb to such backwardness in domesticity.  But then again, back then, I honestly could not understand a lot of things the way I do now.

Aren't seeds for planting?

Silicon Valley is probably one of the few places in the world where you feel poor if you can’t afford a multi-million dollar home.  Everyone you meet is in a startup, venture fund, works at Facebook, Airbnb, or some other company you’ve never heard of that’s worth a billion dollars.  You start to adapt to that mentality thinking this is how life is.  Most conversations start with how’s work, just got funding, we got our seed round, second round, we just went public, we sold.  It’s enough to make you look in the mirror and feel like a complete failure.  Ironically, a few hundred miles away in la la land of LA, the conversation is completely different.  You bring up a seed round, and most people think you’ve got a new angle on gardening.  That is reality, this is not. It's almost as if the Valley has become plastic, and LA is the reality.  How f'd up is that?

5 stages

According to Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, there are five states of grief:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  I learned this when I was in seventh grade when my Catholic education teacher was explaining the process of dying, and it has always stayed with me.  I have at times been preoccupied with the possible death of my loved ones, though I have never had anybody die whom I was close enough with to experience these stages.

However, it was not until recently when I realized that these stages were not just limited to physical death, but that these stages could be attributed to a metaphorical death - the death of a dream, the death of an idea, the death of what you think your existence is (or should be), and the ultimate acceptance of who you really are.

bated breath

Sometimes you wait with bated breath, will this be the day my life changes?  Sometimes it hinges on one phone call and one answer:  yes. or no.   Well today it was a maybe, and that is probably worse than a no because it just means more waiting.  Waiting meaning frustration, aggravation, and more waiting..


It is days like this where I wonder what the tipping point is to just walk away.  Stop pursuing, wanting, envying what's on the other and just be content with what is in front of you.  I mean, millions in this country and certainly around the world would trade places in one second to have a well paying stable job with benefits.  But it is the unique few that would sacrifice this job even if it paid a million dollar salary, for the freedom of being an entrepreneur.   

en·tre·pre·neur

 noun \ˌäⁿn-trə-p(r)ə-ˈnər, -ˈn(y)u̇r\

: a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money

According to Miriam-Webster, this word had its first known use in 1852.  This word I have come to despise as it has become the bane of my marital existence, the source of all things evil and great, and the single word that just may be the tipping point of my relationship as well as my future.

Rev your engines...

The Startup Wife, a truth is stranger than fiction tale of surviving in Silicon Valley.

I am starting this blog anonymously because I am one of many.  One of many wives, husbands, or partners who is married not just to that person, but also to the dream.  I guess this begs the question, will this person ever wake up from the dream and face reality?  Whether or not that is a rhetorical question depends on who you asking.