By Siddhant Masson
It’s often said that parenting is the toughest job you’ll ever have and that founding a startup is the most challenging thing you will ever do.
With 85% of founders suffering from high stress, taking on both roles at once — as I did, founding Wokelo AI just months before my daughter was born — may sound like a recipe for burnout.
Yet, having juggled late-night feeds with early-morning investor calls, I’m proof that you don’t have to choose between building a business and raising a family. In many ways, parenthood has taught me invaluable lessons — patience when life doesn’t go to plan, resilience when exhaustion hits, and trust in the people around me — that have made me a better founder and my startup’s journey easier.
Balance your responsibilities
Until now, your startup has been your baby — but now you have an actual newborn, and it doesn’t care about your meetings, deadlines or clients. They depend entirely on you to keep them happy and healthy, so midnight feeds and diaper changes are just as urgent as investor meetings and product launches.
Welcome to the ultimate test of your ability to multitask. As an early-stage founder, you already wear a dozen hats — CEO, marketer, HR, finance — filling the gaps in your team, and now you can add “dad” to the mix.
Sure, it’s testing, but being able to juggle many roles is vital to growing a startup. Pushing on despite the full schedule and sleeping night is a testament to your passion, motivation and commitment — qualities that 54% of venture capitalists consider critical.
Practice patience
I thought I knew patience — then I became a father. Nothing quite prepares you for the 3 a.m. wake-up call of a screaming baby, especially when you have a high-stakes meeting in the morning.
But if you think about it, running a business isn’t much different. Just when you think you have everything under control, a crisis hits — usually at the most impractical moment. If something critical is going to break, you can bet it’ll be late on a Friday when half of your team has already headed off for the weekend.
There will be days when it all gets too much, and exhaustion makes you consider calling it quits. But whether you’re raising a child or growing a startup, success doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from showing up and staying strong. The sleepless nights and frequent setbacks are just part of the journey toward building something special, and patience and consistency will eventually pay off.
Celebrate small wins
When you’re chasing a big goal, it’s easy to overlook the small wins along the way. However, my daughter helped to open my eyes — her first laugh, the first time she grabbed my finger, the first night she slept through, the first sale, the first hire, the first positive review. They all matter.
These small wins put you a step closer to your goal and are proof that you’re making progress, so they’re worth celebrating. Plus, never underestimate the power of momentum. Studies show that a positive team isn’t just happier, it’s more productive and profitable.
The reality is that 90% of startups never make it past the hurdles you’ve already crossed, so making it through the early stages is an achievement.
Make time for yourself
Startup founders are notorious for pushing their limits, often at the expense of their well-being. In fact, 71% admit they’ve sacrificed their personal lives for work. But when you add a baby into the equation — another human being reliant on you to survive — rest is no longer optional.
You can’t perform at your best if you’re running on empty. No matter how much coffee you drink, burnout will catch up to you if you insist on doing it all.
That’s why having the right support network is so important, whether it’s a co-parent who covers the night shift while you catch up on sleep or a co-founder who picks up the slack when you have personal commitments.
Learning to delegate, ask for help and trust in others isn’t a weakness; it’s a necessity — at home and at work.
Siddhant Masson is the co-founder and CEO of Wokelo.ai, a generative AI investment research platform. Before founding Wokelo, Masson worked in management consulting and M&A at Deloitte, leading complex due diligence projects and contributing to $2 billion unicorn acquisitions at Tata. Today, Wokelo is trusted by more than 1,200 users across 40 organizations, including KPMG, Berkshire, EY, Google, Guggenheim and Draper Associates, delivering comprehensive intelligence in minutes by scanning 100,000-plus real-time sources.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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