People ask how I manage it all. Two young boys and a company. The honest answer is that I do not, not in the way the question imagines.
Some weeks the company gets the best of me, some weeks it is the other way around.
I have stopped calling this failure. It is the actual shape of the job.
The research on mother founders says something I wish I had read earlier: the ones who last do not become superhuman. They narrow priorities, build systems, and let go of the rest. Three things a day that must move, and one of them is for the family. Childcare planned like infrastructure, with backup layers, because one fever can take out the most important meeting of the month.
The context is real.
Women founders still take around two percent of venture funding. We get asked how we will contain risk while our male peers are asked how big it can get. I am not writing this to complain. I am writing it because pretending the water is not there helps no one who is learning to swim in it.
What I want to model is smaller and more useful than a success story. Say your constraints out loud. Put school pickup in the calendar where everyone can see it. Ask for help as a specific task with an owner, not as an apology. Treat sleep as operating capacity, not a reward.
My sons will grow up watching their mother build something hard.
My sons will grow up watching their mother build something hard. I want them to see the honest version. Not a woman who did everything, but a woman who chose what mattered and said so.
If you are building with small children at home, you are not behind. You are carrying two jobs. Systems help. So does saying it.