Becoming a dad while running a startup is, really, really hard.

Amy and I are incredibly excited to announce our little hero, Riyaan Cheung Thambapillai! As you can imagine, the birth of our first child has been a whirlwind of emotions - joy, fear, anxiety, love, stress, exhaustion and euphoria, all at once. I was terrified of the prospect of being a dad and a Founder at the same time. Although we’re still right at the beginning of that experience, I figured I’d share my initial experiences in the interest of helping any future founder-cum-parents on here (also partly its 3.37 AM as I write this and Riyaan insists on falling asleep on my chest, so I’ve got to occupy my brain somehow!).?

Of course, we’re only three weeks in and we’re obviously still learning how to parent (just as I’m also still learning how to “CEO”) - so I reserve the right to revisit all of this in the near future!

1. Parenting as a Founder means yet more hard decisions

Being a founder means making hard decisions. But becoming a parent while being a startup founder adds a new dimension.?

I had scheduled a three-day work event in California which was before Riyaan’s due date. It was a pretty important event that I thought it would be very helpful to attend. But when Riyaan arrived a little earlier than expected, I had to choose between attending this event that I thought could be pivotal for Credal, or staying with my 9 day old kid and providing my family the emotional and operational help that I had promised. I initially said I wouldn’t go, but a couple days before, were going really well at home: Riyaan’s routine was getting regular and Amy encouraged me to go, especially with her mum being home to help.

But the day I left, Riyaan’s sleep and feeding took a turn for the worse, and it ended up being a really hard period. I considered leaving early and returning home. The choices are hard for any working parent, but especially for a startup Founder where the business really does depend on your drive to make it work, against all the objective odds. Yes your family depends on you to provide emotional support at home, but your team also depends on you - and many even bet a significant part of their career on you - to make sure the startup succeeds.

I ended up staying, and the event proved really valuable for Credal. But there is no right answer to these questions, and every founder will have to find the answers that make sense for them. Prepare yourself emotionally and physically to be ready for this new dimension of decision making.

2. Lean on your friends, family and team as much as you can

Having the right support makes a huge difference. We’ve been lucky enough to have Amy’s mum come and stay with us. If you’re planning on breastfeeding then it may not seem like there’s much anyone else can do, but trust me there is! Amy’s mum has been an amazing support at home, not just with basics like grocery shopping, meal prep and having someone to look after the baby when we’re exhausted, but it’s also been really special for Riyaan to be able to bond with his ‘Popo’.?

Our friends also helped us a tonne, with multiple folks stopping by with life-saving donations of delicious treats and home cooked food which have really helped us make it through the early days of little to no sleep but sticking to a healthy diet.

At the same time, the incredible team at Credal really stepped up, and in the short period I’ve been away they’ve already managed to get multiple six-figure deals done without me - a proud moment for me seeing the team rise to the occasion but also a helpful reminder to hire incredible talent and trust them with the agency they need to get the mission done.

That being said, every CEO knows that as nice as the idea of fully detaching yourself during your paternity leave might seem, your startup can sometimes have different ideas, and for us there were a variety of vital operational things that it made sense for me to be around for: staying on top of our GDPR recertification and being available to sign the lease on new office space quickly. Having extra support at home so you can pop out when needed in those moments is a life saver.

3. Every day means new challenges, and new joys

One of the things that makes it hard to describe what it’s like being a new parent when people ask is that the experience literally changes dramatically, day by day. The first day, Riyaan like most kids, was extremely peaceful. 48 hours later, he was the polar opposite, becoming really agitated as he struggled to learn to latch but desperately needed to eat. Amy and I were perpetually exhausted; short on sleep, urgently trying to learn to breastfeed Riyaan under the threat of the hospital taking him away from us and into NICU if he didn’t meet their weight and blood sugar thresholds.?

We needed to supplement his diet with formula milk to help him reach those goals, and that came with paranoia about what the long term effects on his health and IQ might be if he became dependent. With great persistence from both Amy and Riyaan, we did eventually figure out how to consistently latch by day five (though we still have much to learn in this regard). But that was all thrown out the window a week or two later when Amy and I shared an iced coffee in the NY summer heat. Despite being below the guidelines for safe caffeine intake when breastfeeding, it clearly affected Riyaan, and he was incredibly fussy, agitated, and unable to sleep or latch afterwards. That meant he didn’t gain as much weight as expected, so our paedatricians put us on notice that if his weight gain didn’t accelerate we would have to start supplementing his diet again.

Almost every day we had a different problem: at first it was that he kept falling asleep while feeding, then the next day it was that he couldn’t latch, then he could but he was going crazy, feeding for an hour continuously. Almost every day our budding family would solve yesterday’s challenge together, but now face a new one - and early on, this was all happening under the external threat or fear of Riyaan being taken away to NICU where we would lose precious moments to bond with him, and with unknown long term potential health effects.?

But at the same time as we were solving these problems, we were also discovering new things about Riyaan: not only was he learning day by day but he was also deepening his bond with us and Popo. It was truly a joy to see him master these new skills, learn new facial expressions, as well as for us to learn little tricks to calm and soothe him.?

4. Parenthood is different for every parent, just as childhood is different for every kid

I’d read and heard a lot of mythology about being a dad beforehand - that as soon as the baby is born you’re struck by lightning and suddenly experience this instantaneous total transformation into a new person. That wasn’t at all how I experienced it: in the first 24 hours after birth, it was still hard for me to focus on anything other than being in awe of Amy, my wife, who had just gone through this insane, physically traumatic experience of giving birth. But as soon as Riyaan started to come to life, as you learn to recognize the exact meaning of tiny variations in the sounds he makes and facial expressions, even the probably random, totally accidental physical movements that feel like him trying to give you a hug or a kiss, had a huge effect on my connection to Riyaan, and how I’ve experienced the emotions of becoming a father. I’d always been skeptical of the ‘struck by lightning’ narratives of parenthood and so in some ways, I wasn’t surprised by this, but after having Riyaan I heard from many people that this narrative had caused them a lot of guilt and anxiety in the immediate aftermath of the birth, as though somehow they were never going to love their kid enough. But as much as I already love Riyaan to pieces, one of the best parts of this stage of being a dad for me is the knowledge that the love can only grow over time, as we learn and help each other through the coming years.

5. Parenthood doesn’t mean less motivation to make your startup succeed - it means more

Before Riyaan’s birth, I was worried about whether the additional demands on my time at home would draw energy from my determination to make Credal succeed. In practice, I’ve found the opposite to be true. From the beginning, Credal was founded because Jack and I wanted to build a better future. Now I just have someone to build that future for. All the abundance I want Credal to unlock, the missions of our customers we support in Climate, healthcare, education - every single one is now even more personal, even more existential to me than it was before. Although doing both parenthood and founding is far from easy - far from being in conflict with one another, I’ve found that parenting has only accelerated my drive as a Founder to build the better future I already wanted for myself. Now I have someone for whom I want it even more.

Get Ready for the Roller Coaster of your life

Choosing to Found a startup, instead of taking the big tech salary and great work life balance option, is already like doing life on hard mode. Much tougher, but much more rewarding. Of course, every parent’s experience is going to be different, but for me, doing it while being a dad, at least so far just two weeks in, is already like before, just on steroids: get used to even less sleep, even higher highs, even lower lows - the ultimate emotional roller coaster. Balancing all this is extremely hard, and there’s no one size fits all answer - you’ll have to make the decisions that make the most sense for the specifics of your family and business. Lean on your friends, family and team as much as you can, and find ways to enjoy the precious early days without completely neglecting your business. But our new little family is already the most precious thing in my world and while the experience is hard, it’s also true that there’s nothing quite like it.