Yesterday I saw a post popped up in the Acquired slack's #parents channel. Marc basically asked: "has anyone started a vc-backed company while having very young kids or planning to? [...] how did timing it with a young family impact it [your company] longer term?".
This was my answer:
one thing i didn’t expect when starting something new while becoming a parent [and i can speak on behalf of my wife too who’s launched something new too while pregnant]: having young kids at home makes you so much more efficient. and i’m talking like 1,000x more efficient. period. both in terms of: (a) prioritizing what to work on [answering the simple question: what would seriously move the needle?] and (b) decreasing time between starting to work and being 100% focus/ deep in flow mode (procrastination just completely disappeared)
Of course it made me think of an older blog post I wrote: your decision-making skill, focus and working hard. Sam Altman's quote at the very end is on point:
Focus is a force multiplier on work.Almost everyone I've ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn't matter.
Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.
Right there might lie the secret about launching your startup later in life: very young kids act as a forcing function to focus. Which makes me think of this HBR research on The Age of Startup Founders and this funny conclusion:
Among the top 0.1% of startups based on growth in their first five years, we find that the founders started their companies, on average, when they were 45 years old.
updated dec. 10th, 2024: adding this beautiful post by Nikunj. I can't agree more.
