Building a startup is an entirely different experience from raising a child. There isn’t a pre-seed or seed round for the baby to help get you off the ground, despite the fact the product has been built already and there are over 7 billion examples of product-market fit. Yes, you can hire people to help care for the baby but you’re not going to be able to bring on hundreds (or thousands) of talented, capable and experienced people, aligned on the mission and vision, working together with a shared sense of purpose, to help take care of the infant. Incidents in the middle of the night are always a shitshow, and there isn’t a diaper-ops team in India around to take care of it. On top of daily stand-ups there are lie-downs, tummy time and crawl arounds. One on ones are impromptu, with unclear agendas. Conversations are one sided instead of collaborative, and most of the time you wonder if the other side understands what you’re saying in the first place. And bored meetings are more mind-numbing than you’d expect.
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Late Night Ramblings of a Month Old Dad
A month ago my wife Nisha and I welcomed our son Ishaan into the world. As any parent will tell you (solicited or not), having your first child changes things forever. Now, certain things in life you have to experience yourself to understand. Parenting is most definitely one of those. No amount of intellectualizing, scenario planning, reading books like “The Expectant Father”, “Bringing up Bebe” or “Twelve Hours’ Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old” will appropriately equip you for the emotional rush of seeing and holding your child for the first time. In that moment everything you’ve done to prepare for parenthood goes out the window and the ’new normal’ sets in.
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