With the holiday season upon us, we're pressed to socialize with our coworkers and spend time with family all at once.
The folks on this list have found an easy solution to that time crunch—all year round. Their cofounders are their spouses.
It's a daring choice to launch a company with your true love. If things go wrong, your jobs and your marriage are both at stake.
On the other hand, marrying your cofounder has advantages, too. Running a company is an all-consuming thing. Why not share that with your beloved?
While it makes sense for the couples, risk-averse investors have sometimes looked askance at these arrangements. But Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley have rich histories of married cofounders including the founders of Cisco Systems, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner; VMware, founded by Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum; Bebo, founded by Michael and Xochi Birch; and Buddy media, founded by Michael and Kass Lazerow.
Casey Sackett and Jennifer Wong, cofounders of Alt12 Apps
When Casey Sackett and Jennifer Wong were expecting their first child, Jennifer found no easy way to document the experience.
"I had a pregnancy journal to hand-write notes, a couple of reference books for health information, a few photos of my growing baby bump on my phone," she says. She wanted all this stuff on her phone as a few other things, like a contact her mom's support group for advice.
So in 2009, Casey Sackett and Jennifer Wong launched Alt 12 Apps with BabyBump, a mobile app for expecting mothers. They've since launched two more apps.
So far, so good for the couple. They raised $1.26 million in venture capital last spring and more than 1.2 million people have downloaded their app.
Susan Gregg Koger and Eric Koger, cofounders of Modcloth
High-school sweethearts Eric and Susan Gregg Koger launched Modcloth thanks to Susan's love of vintage clothing.
Susan couldn't resist buying cute vintage pieces, even if they didn't fit her. Eventually, she and Eric went off to college and her dorm room grew so full of stuff they decided to sell it online.
Today Modcloth employs 300 and has raised money from Accel and Norwest.
Erika Trautman and Cameron McCaddon, cofounders of FlixMaster
Erika Trautman and Cameron McCaddon fled the high cost of the Bay Area to launch their startup in the relatively affordable locale of Boulder, Colo., where they joined the 2011 class of TechStars, an incubator.
The company makes a product that allows for easy, Web-based video editing—a tool that typically has required expensive desktop software.
Since its launch a few months ago, FlixMaster has grown to about 6,000 users and has gained the attention of some big partners, like Sony.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider