The Mother/Founder Paradox and What It Means for All Entrepreneurs

After spending much of our engagement diving into data and testing many new business ideas, my husband and co-founder, Danny Boice, and I finally decided to pull the trigger on our on-demand private investigator startup during our honeymoon. That same year, we had a baby.Fast forward to today, and we closed our second round of funding. Many in the startup community have asked how I am able to raise a baby, mother four young children, and raise funding. I understand the question. Founding a startup is hard. It takes 100 percent of your focus; you have to be all in with your time, your talent, and your treasure.However, there is progress. Many venture firms buck these trends by surpassing the global averages. Between 2010 and 2015, 54 venture firms surpassed the aforementioned average of 10 percent, and 51 firms surpassed the seed/angel average of 17 percent. Furthermore, in 2009, 9 percent of funded startups had at least one female founder. In 2014, that percentage doubled to 18 percent.And Michelle Budig, author of “The Fatherhood Bonus and the Motherhood Penalty,” found that working mothers are perceived to be “more distracted and less productive” since they have children for whom they need to provide, while working fathers are believed to be more stable.

I spent the first months of the company’s founding nursing a newborn and advising from behind the scenes. We had exponential growth from day one, and that immediate traction meant that Danny and I were working around the clock. All the while, we were caring for a baby, being the best parents we could to our four other children and building our company into everything we knew it could be from our data and research.