Dad thoughts

Can I be a good father and build a successful company?

So, 2022 ended on a high note—with the birth of my daughter, Davey.

I’ve now been a father for about 6 weeks. It’s amazing. But, naturally, it has been (and continues to be) an adjustment. Making time for writing, for example, has been hard.

My work situation has been both a challenge and a blessing. At the moment, SharpestMinds has just two employees—including me. So taking paternity leave was a non-starter. But working from home with flexible hours has been a gift. I get to see my daughter way more than the typical working father would. And my wife, home on maternity leave, is not left on her own.

But work still has to get done. And it’s even more important that I focus on growing SharpestMinds. I want to provide a good life for my family. I feel a tension that I’m sure every dad feels at some point—between working hard to provide financial security and spending time with my child.

I knew this was coming and I was quite stressed about it. For a few months, I was the sole employee at SharpestMinds and I knew there was a baby on the way. A wave of layoffs and the growing “macro-economic uncertainty” only added to the stress (SharpestMinds’ revenue—based on income share agreements—is very coupled with the tech labor market).

My (correct) expectation was that when the baby came, sleep would be hard to come by—and with it my ability to focus. So I spent the last few months of 2022 preparing for survival. I carved a new role out of my day-to-day responsibilities and managed to onboard a new employee in early December. At the same time, I tried to automate as many of my operational duties as I could. Luckily, there was a lot I could do on that front by just paying off technical debt.

A big chunk of the customer support I was doing was a result of lazy, incomplete infrastructure—handling edge cases and broken UX. I ended up doing a complete rewrite of our software for handling payments and income share agreements. The result was less admin work for me and a better UX for our mentors and mentees. It also felt good to be building things that I knew would be useful.

When Davey eventually came into the world, I was prepared. I had handed off some time consuming tasks to my new employee. I reduced the operational cost of running the company. And I had lowered my expectations about how much work I could do during these first few months with a newborn.

After 6 weeks, sleep is still a luxury. I’m still constantly tired and far from my old, productive self. But work is getting done again. I’m learning how to schedule my time and energy effectively in this new paradigm. Plus, I was home to see Davey’s first smile.

Maybe I can handle being a good father while building a company.

Maybe.