ABOUT

It’s time to radically rethink what parenting and working can and should look like. We can’t just keep doing things the way they’ve always been done and expect new results.

That’s what Startup Parent stands for.

We paired two terms that might seem to be at odds—completely opposite from each other—and we’re asking us to consider all of it, in context. Let’s really dig in and look at life, leadership, business: all at the same time. Pregnancy and the creation of human life has a tremendous amount to teach us. Maybe the world of pregnancy and parenting can help us rethink the startup and business world. Similarly, the world of startups and businesses can be instrumental in teaching us new ways of thinking about how we show up to each.

We start with questions.

Startup Parent is a place to ask questions and share stories about motherhood, business, and entrepreneurship. What does it look like to be a working parent? What does it look like to be a parent? Where are their gaps and breaks? What does it look like to change this narrative, and create new stories, and live into a new future of what working and parenting can really be?

We tell a broad range of stories.

There is no one picture of motherhood, or fatherhood, or becoming a parent. We strive to tell the entire range of stories, from the early beginnings of fertility and infertility journeys, to uncertainty or hope around becoming a parent, to step-parents and bonus parents and non-default parents. We want to capture the reality of what parenting can look like, as a way to begin to understand, shift, and expand the range of ideas we have about what we are “supposed” to be doing as parents and entrepreneurs.

Similarly, building a business doesn’t have to be venture-backed, hustle-based, or, well—let’s be a little more blunt: you don’t have to be a white, male, college dropout from Harvard to start a successful business. In fact, women entrepreneurs are making huge strides in creating businesses in ways that haven’t gotten enough attention. From women sharing co-CEO roles to building companies where they work three days per week to building companies while on parental leave, to creating companies that solve modern problems for working parents—we’ve got a lot of fascinating stories we want to unearth and share, and we’re in the middle of doing it.

At Startup Parent, we want to hear from a huge range of voices and experiences when it comes to starting businesses and beginning families, especially when these moments happen at the same time. The current cultural narratives are so limiting as to be detrimental, and it’s time to reinvent the way we show up in parenting, work, and in life. We believe that business and family can exist together and ideally even compliment one another, but it can’t keep going the way it’s going. We aim to support one another in our work and parenting endeavors, seek ways to piece those experiences together in ways that make real life sense and lend support, community and connection to other mothers, parents and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Let’s figure it out. Let’s build the future of work, together.

MEET OUR TEAM

We are currently a small, remote team led by the founder and executive director, Sarah Peck. Sarah is a mama to two small kids of her own, and her background is in studying the psychology of how people work, form habits, and learn from their mistakes—all which apply seamlessly to studying people through the lens of parenthood and entrepreneurship.