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Motherhood and entrepreneurship are each a full-time job, a true labour of love that requires full passion, full focus, and let’s be honest, more energy than one mere human has in them! Now, imagine doing them at the same time. You’re not simply juggling two roles; you are carrying two worlds, each with its deadlines, crises, and celebrations, and attempting to make them sync all at once without losing yourself in the process.
When you’re a mom-founder, your days are a series of juggling acts like spending time with him, teaching him values, being around when he does his math work and math, and being with him when he is hitting his smashes in tennis, table tennis, etc. There are moments of sheer gratitude and moments of immeasurable self-doubt; times you feel like you've mastered both worlds and times you wonder if you are repeatedly losing at both.
The Feeling of Guilt is Legit (and Unending)
You will feel guilty if you miss bedtime for a pitch, and guilty if you miss the pitch to get to bedtime. The goal isn't to "fix" guilt - it's to place it. Think of it as a signal, not a sentence - is the priority order wrong for the week? Do you need childcare on launch days? Create simple rituals to ground yourself (five-minute breakfast date, no phone bathtime, Friday afternoon park run). Your presence in the key moments is worth more than perfection in all moments.
Say Goodbye to Routine
Children and businesses don’t follow the calendar. A fever can hit on launch day. A growth spurt can hit on board meeting day. Rather than striving for a mythical routine, design for chaos. Work in short, impactful sprints. Have tasks "modular" for 20-minute moments of time (to approve creative, send proposals, record a Loom). Have a Plan B (and C): documents in the cloud, flexible meeting windows, and teammates who can advance projects without you.
You Can't Do It All By Yourself
The "superwoman" narrative is a branding lie! Sustainable founders have circles: a co-parent / co-partner that constitutes true co-leadership in your family life; paid help you respect as work and pay fairly; a dependable and trusted paediatrician; a bookkeeper who actually likes spreadsheets; and other entrepreneurs swapping parenting advice and daycare phone numbers. Delegation is not a luxury. It is infrastructure built into your process. Every hour you buy back in time adds up to calm parenting and better decision-making.
Success is a Moving Target
Before children, your notion of success centred around a revenue milestone or runway. Once children arrive, success transforms - sometimes week to week. One quarter it might be moving past ₹1 crore ARR; the next it might be leaving at 5 p.m. to favourite morning ailment on sports day, with no dread. Do not be afraid to move the target alongside your season, and let your own metrics evolve. Track 2 dashboards: 1 for your business (i.e., cash, pipeline, churn) and 1 for your life (i.e., sleep, connection, energy). If either is red (support) on either dashboard for too long, recalibrate your targets, not your own worth.
You Will Become a Time Management Ninja
Motherhood catalyses an efficiency into your life. You will learn how to batch decisions, script your mornings, say no without a whole paragraph (with practice), and use your commute as a micro-decision workshop. Cherish your golden hours-those rare and steep parts of circadian quiet when your brain is short-when you should do your hardest work, not in the pinches of time. Automate your boring tasks (example: recurring grocery orders, invoice reminders) and templatise the repeatable (sales emails, onboarding, standard operating procedures). Remember, you have one investor that is most important: your time!
Appreciate the Glory of Imperfection
Your deck won't always be pixel-perfect, and neither will your kitchen. Some weeks the company has the best of you, and some weeks the kids. That's not failure; that's the real tempo. Imperfection builds resilience, shows self-compassion to your children, and humanises your brand. Share the process, not just the wins, customers, teams and kids respond to what is authentic.
Authored by Archana Khosla Burman, Founder, VERTICES PARTNERS & ZONE; FLO National Co-Chair, Startup Cell | Views expressed by the author are their own.