On a maternity leave as a startup founder
The journey of refocusing life
Two years ago
My team and I were living the dream — growing a tech startup in Silicon Valley. We felt alive and high on adrenaline. We were meeting people who’ve built or were building life-changing technologies. Uber drivers pitched us app ideas. We drove next to, behind and in front of self-driving cars on a daily basis. We saw tech media make heroes and break others. We lived where the headlines were made. We couldn’t drink a coffee without hearing someone pitch a business idea. We worked from Stanford, met with folks from Apple, Facebook, Google. We felt the world’s brain potential gathered in this place. Meeting with renowned VC funds was a daily activity. Succeeding or failing was the name of the game!
It was tough though. Behind the glamour of this life, there was a lot of misery. Burnout was knocking on our doors. Something was holding me tight for the throat and I couldn’t knock it off. We were 5 teammates, living in a 2 BDR apartment in Palo Alto. This was also our office.
We were running out of money…again.
The product we were building was far from done. For months of meetings with angels and VCs in San Francisco, we’ve gotten only NOs. We had gone through one of the top business accelerators in San Francisco — Alchemist but gotten even more confused about what to build & for whom. Life was only this. There was no space for anything else. The life of a founder filled the whole space, yet it felt empty. Whenever I saw the question — What’s your hobby? I couldn’t recall anything. We worked.
Starting with a side project
In the craze of this life, my partner and I got engaged. My partner, who also happened to be one of the other co-founders of our company. To get married sounded…overwhelming. For the first time since founding the company in 2013, we had a plan to do something on the side — planning the wedding.
Product discussions morphed into flowers picking, website illustrations into invitations design. It wasn’t “either-or” but both.
This is where evenings and weekends went to, as well as two full weeks before the big date. We managed to pull it off. Our wedding was the happiest moment of our lives and it charged us with tons of energy. Different energy than the one we could find at work. We were hooked. We wanted more of it.
Bringing the rocking boat to safe harbor
We wanted a family. A big happy one. This meant more to us than chasing zeros in the Valley. We had spent our 20s working relentlessly on our passion. It was an exciting but unstable life. To make space for both dreams — life as a founder and life as a parent, we had to resolve a few problems:
- We had no fixed place to live in. Or an idea where it should be?
- We had no steady income. We were depended on investments.
- Time was scarce. Cause we used it only on working.
Suddenly, we had to find the solutions fast, we were expecting a baby boy in 8 months.
Stability
After the big news, we packed our bags, sold all possessions from our startup home and left for Denmark. We decided that this is where we wanted to raise our family. Leaving the Valley behind was tough because we had to let go of our dream there. We’ve led a crazy exciting life where we never knew what will happen the next day, who will we meet and how the dots will connect. Now we were going for the very predictable and calm life of Scandinavia. We decided that this is what we need now. We rented a place. Problem #1 was solved.
Now off to Problem #2 - paying the rent. We didn’t generate enough revenue yet so we were just burning the cash of others. This was not sustainable and obviously very stressful. So to eliminate the stress, we said no to the investment game and yes to working for our own money. We started freelancing — building concepts & products for others. Obviously, our investors weren’t ecstatic about this decision, but it was the only way for us to keep going and be happy with it. The freelancing model gave us stability and predictability. Of course, it came at the cost of slowing progress at our company…but it was better than losing our health for it.
Mental shift
Problem #3 was the work-life balance. This was a hard one. It meant being OK with the slow pace. It also meant stopping to compare ourselves to this & that company, this & that founder, this & that version of our “successful” selves. For years we’ve been like a dog chasing a bone (Isn’t every startup like that?).
Right when you’re about to catch it, it gets pulled away or bigger more tasty bone shows up on the way. It’s a huge drive forwards. But it deprives you of living in the moment and appreciating what it is now, not what it could be tomorrow. So it was a hard mental work to let go of this game and focus on the now.
It doesn’t mean we didn’t still have the dreams for our company and just gave up. We simply altered the expectations about the pace things should happen with. We made space for the bigger dream of ours — the family. We made time.
From a founder to a full-time mom for one year
Now I’m on a maternity leave for a year, enjoying every moment with our son. I’m trying to be present when we are together. To not get lured into team discussions and decisions. My full-time job is to play together, do exercises, take walks, make a mess, clean the mess and laugh all day long…and sometimes cry at night! 😀 It’s a very different life than the one I had just a year ago but I don’t regret it for a second.
Not being needed
This detachment didn’t happen over a day. It took a while to build up a foundation where I’m not needed. In the months of pregnancy, we saved up money from freelancing and grew the team of Swipes. This way things could happen without me making them happen. This was a priority for me because I knew that I’d be stressing out about being a bottleneck.
I also knew that the guilt trips of letting the team down would have prevented me from being present as a parent.
Even if everyone would have said it’s OK, I would have felt it’s not.
Not getting things my way
I then had to go through the classical dilemma — Should I do things my way or be OK with someone else doing them their way? As a founder that was a hard challenge. What eased it was finding the right people to join the team. People who’d still do things their way, not mine, but I would trust their choices. Detachment is easier when you know you’re leaving your work in good hands. Now tens of decisions get taken a day without me, most of the time I don’t know what we’re up to and where we are. When I peak over my husband’s shoulder to see the latest from the team, I’m awed. So many new things. I grew to love this surprise.
Not working me is still me
The last thing that really struck me through this experience was getting used to the new me. A mom. Not a professional, that knows her job. Not a founder, that puts down fires on a daily basis. A mom.
A diaper-changing goof, that can wipe the floor well, cook with one hand, hold a baby with the other and sing horribly. That’s also me.
I look back at this journey to maternity leave and think of all the decisions that made it happen. It required stopping the rush for a moment, looking around, seeing a new dream and making space for it. It doesn’t have to be “either — or”. A fast-growth company OR a failure. A founder OR a mom. There is space for both if you just look for it.
