For many founders, startups can feel like their babies. They spend late nights tending to their needs, sacrifice their social lives for years and do whatever they can to see them grow.
But, according to a new study, more and more founders in the UK are building their tech startups alongside building their families, giving way to the rise of the founder parent.
Antler, one of Europe’s most active early-stage venture capital firms, recently conducted an internal study of its 450-strong portfolio to understand how common the founder parent is.
Among its own portfolio, the number of founder parents has shot up from one in 2019 to almost 40 and according to its research, the growing trend may be beneficial.
Almost three quarters (72%) of Antler’s entrepreneur parents said raising a family has made them better founders, forcing them to be resilient and solve problems efficiently.
UKTN spoke to some of Antler’s founder parents to understand the unique challenges and benefits of the phenomenon.
“I think that being a parent and a founder are actually really complimentary experiences,” said Morgan Mixon, co-founder of Peachies, a startup developing high-performance sustainable nappies and mother of a 15-month old.
“They both come with roller coasters of emotion and your ability to be resilient or develop thick skin and rise to the challenge has been really comparable.”
Mixon, unique even among other founder parents, launched her startup in 2021 whilst seven months pregnant and has been “growing the baby and the business at the same time”.
The prospect of dealing with the early stages of a startup so late in pregnancy may be too stressful for most, but according to Mixon, “your threshold for the kind of stress you can carry goes up as you enter these situations”.
“There are always new opportunities, whether that’s to go to my child’s nursery and watch the Christmas special they’re doing, or taking an investor meeting,” Mixon said.
For those facing difficult situations, let alone two behemoths of stress such as these, burnout can be a real problem, but for Mixon, the solution is to understand boundaries.
“In the morning, in the evenings, if I’m with my kid, you’re not going to hear from me. I put my phone away, and I try to be present because you’re constantly pulled in both directions and that makes you feel worse if you’re trying to juggle both, at least for me.”
For many founders, even those not encumbered by familial responsibilities, separating work from life can be a challenge. But, according to Harry Wilson, co-founder of flexible workspace booking and search platform FlowSpace and father of three, being a parent may actually help with this.
“You’re able to switch off, and that’s a huge benefit,” Wilson said. If I compare it to how I was before, I would be always on. The benefit of kids is that you do switch off, you pick them up and you’re with them, and you have to be focused on them.”
Wilson co-founded the company in 2021 just months after having his first child. Since then, he has gone on to have two other children.
For Wilson, juggling these competing responsibilities has made him better able to accept when things aren’t perfect.
“It’s a tonic to everyday life, to spend time with kids, and it puts everything in perspective,” Wilson said.
“Issues that previously you would negatively spiral on if you have too much time to focus on them, you just brush off and move on.”
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