A startup is filled with countless roadblocks and challenges, many business, some personal. I feel lucky that I don’t struggle with a sick parent, Asperger’s, or something truly serious. My biggest personal challenge is simply being a parent of young children.
When I was younger, startup life was simpler. I could completely obsess about a startup, my hours were truly insane, and I reveled in the intensity. When sacrifices needed to be made, the only person who had to feel the bite of that sacrifice was myself. It is much harder as a parent. My spouse works and keeps the roof over our head, we have the extra expense of a nanny (and sometimes a babysitter if I need to go to an evening event), and of course young kids take a huge amount of time, require flexibility, and put a lot of constraints on my schedule.
Compromise is harder than obsession. To make a gross generalization, I think it is even worse for working women, who feel a greater internal pressure to be super-mom, and for whom the toll of not being maximally-great at everything adds up.
One benefit I have with age is experience and the ability to work smarter, but that isn’t enough. I try to get up at 5am and work while the family is sleeping, and I continue to experiment with different techniques to ramp up my productivity (I like Andreessen’s three lists and “3 things to do tomorrow” tactics). I have more work to do there. I have trimmed how much sleep I get, but too much of that backfires on productivity and my sharpness in external meetings.
I have seen startups wreck marriages. Sometimes this is due to stress and a person pouring all of their emotional energy into work. Sometimes it is due to money. Few things are more destructive to marriages than money issues. I could not do this startup without the support of my spouse, her willingness to let us use savings, and her acceptance, at least for a period of time, of the blanket of strain and stress it puts on everything.
It is a challenge, but there are always challenges that must be overcome. That is the nature of this beast. At least these challenges, by which I mean both parenthood and entrepreneurship, were my *choice*. It is up to me to make it work, and up to me to find the right balance that keeps everything afloat. In startup-land, there are mentors and a great support network of other entrepreneurs, but there are no handouts.
I hope you don’t mind the segue into the personal side of things. Dwelling on my challenges is only useful if it helps me discover areas I can improve. Otherwise, I would rather count my blessings. I just listed entrepreneurship and parenthood as challenges, but they are also definitely blessings.