Reflections on Startup Children

 Startups are like the children of their founders. What are the implications of this analogy?

My youngest daughter just graduated from college. What a milestone for her life of just over two decades! I remember when she was just an embryo…then a baby…then a child…then an adolescent…then a young adult venturing forth into the world. What a developmental journey!

What does this have to do with startups? Honestly, for me, my startups are my “children” as well. They begin from the tiniest egg, grow as we nourish them with all the resources we can muster, changing shape, hitting milestones of various magnitudes along the way, staying close and sheltered for a while, and ultimately striking out into the hostile world to hopefully have a great positive impact. Along the way, many will contribute to their growth and opportunities. It truly takes a community to grow a successful startup!

So what analogies between parenthood and startup leadership have I noticed along multiple treks on both types of “parenting” journeys?

• Unlike “just a job,” there is a sense of responsibility, ownership, commitment to the health and growth of all of your “children” that leads one to make great sacrifices to enable them to flourish. It is this willingness to sacrifice our own comfort that leads to tremendous dedication and pouring in that ultimately increases a startup’s chances of success.  It is entirely different than just showing up to do a job. Embrace and leverage the energy and commitment that would lead a mother to lay down her life for her children as a source of creative power as you lay down your life for your startup.  (I wish I could say that I can maintain a healthy work-life balance and leave my work at the office, but honestly, I have never been able to do that for my startup children – and I believe it to be one of the secrets of startup success that they can absorb all the commitment you can give them.)
  
  
• Like human children, startup “children” often surprise us in unexpected ways. They often don’t evolve according to our plans for them. And we have to adapt and adjust our plans to emergent realities, figuring out what our children need and demand from us along the way. This leads us to express our commitment to them in sometimes unexpected ways as we feel our way forward and figure it out on the fly. Embrace the unexpected as the opportunity that it represents – and enjoy the discoveries along the path.
  
  
• Experience helps. While each child comes with unique challenges, we are better equipped for the second than we were for the first. As we tackle the particular problems of each startup, with experience, it is easier to trust in the process and timing, easier to tackle issues like funding, product development, and commercial launch. Even though the challenges each successive child presents are unique and different, our previous experience enables us to handle some of the common elements with confidence and focus more attention on the new.
  
  
• Worry is a constant. As adults, we possess the capability of seeing all the ways things might go wrong. We anticipate the hurts that false friends can cause. We foresee the distress that comes when our child’s aspirations are not fully realized. We react to the pain of a skinned knee, a bad breakup, a lost job, or any number of other tragedies from the perspective of seeing a bigger picture, understanding the risks, and wishing everything would work out while knowing that it is unlikely to. We feel a pervasive sense of worry as we help our children navigate the pitfalls of life. Now that I have lived in the startup ecosystem for a while now, I find that I have enough knowledge and perspective, like an adult parent raising children, to be aware of the risks and challenges facing us and to worry about them. Yet, I learned from raising my human children – and from my first few startups – that worry only gets you so far. Bubblewrap only works in our imagination. Instead, we have to jump into the mud and muck, support our children/team with everything we have, while still empowering them to grow up strong and powerful on their own two feet. Letting our worry turn into overcontrolling only undermines our progress. Finding the right balance between being aware of risks and not being consumed by them is essential.
   
• As our children grow through adolescence and ultimately into young adulthood, we have to prepare to set them up for success and eventually let them go. Finding good boundaries, preparing them for the future, building the capabilities that enable them to operate independently are essential to growing them beyond the limits of their parents and/or their founders (as the case may be!). You will know you have succeeded when your “child” can stand on their own two feet and tackle the world without you.  Sometimes this is when they head off to college or a first real job or into a marriage. Or, in startupland, when that strategic acquirer shows up on your doorstep, offering to marry your “child” and take them off into a new home. Prepare them well – and watch them fly!
  

May all of your children thrive!