Entrepreneurship vs. Love

I broke up with my VC boyfriend.He told me that he wasn’t in the right place to have a relationship when the hours and workloads are getting crazier and crazier.

I can’t give up as I’m getting so close and I have a lot of people to prove wrong.

Wrong timing?

I read an article which says that there is no such thing as ‘wrong timing’, because the right person will make you their priority no matter how crazy life is. Yes, I learned that ‘you will never ever be his No.1’ and I am independent but apparently there is no No.2 in my ex’s life.

I guess the author of that article did not date an entrepreneur because entrepreneurs especially those in early phase start ups are just another breed of human being altogether.

Can entrepreneurship and love life co-exist?

I think of three extremely successful entrepreneurs to bench mark against and guess what – they are all happily married and they recognise the importance of family.

Richard Branson

Richard Branson got married at 22, knowing that there are a lot of shits to be done in his life. He met his second wife Joan and went all out for her. They built a family of four while Richard continued to go for crazy adventures and build his empire in music and aviation industry. He had his whole family onboard Virgin’s historical first flight Maiden Voyager to celebrate his success.

My family means the world to me, much more so than business.

Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban became a self made billionaire when he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo before the dot.com bubble burst in 1999. He met his wife Tiffany in a gym in 1997 and tied the knot in 2002. In a New York Times article published in 2000, Tiffany said that Mark Cuban’s schedule is apportioned into blocks of seconds and she knew she was not going to be his No.1.

Today, the couple are happily married with 3 daughters, and Mark commits an incredible amount of time to be a hand on parent.

Marcus Lemonis

In a podcast on inc.com, Marcus Lemonis talked about toughness in balancing entrepreneurship and relationship.  He said that entrepreneurship is a long journey and life commitment that causes most relationships to fall apart. That being said, Marcus is a married man who runs multi-billion company.

Love is a life time venture

You need to invest your time and effort to nurture and build a relationship before you can enjoy the return in long run. It pays off when you have someone to share your success at each and every milestone and someone whom you can lean on when hitting a bump.

Shutting down love life completely to be able to focus solely on building business ventures does not sound like a wise investment decision.

Life lessons learned

1. A great life is about balance. While you build people and start ups but ignore your own personal life, you are incomplete even when you close the millions or billions dollars deal.

2. Love is just like an investment to diversify your portfolio in life, you’ve got to treat your relationship the way you treat any other investment.

3. The most successful entrepreneurs have proven that entrepreneurship and love life can totally co-exist; all it takes is to give a damn.

4 There is indeed a wrong timing in relationship – never date an early phase start up entrepreneur. Period.


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