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10 Brilliant Women Entrepreneurs on Parenting, Perspective, and Life

You’re the trailblazer we need. The way work looks is broken. It’s not going to change by someone else. It’s going to change through us, building the future we imagine, fighting against what’s not working, and taking as stand. If you can parent, you can entrepreneur. Motherhood transforms you. These, and many more, are the words of wisdom from our first ten interviews for Startup Parent.

Choosing the Simple Moments — Episode #009 With Erin Boyle of Reading My Tea Leaves 

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Having children invites chaos into your life. So if your work focuses on minimalism and simple living, how do you align those themes with the bedlam of being a mother, a parent? As the mother of two children under the age of four, with a six-month old in the house, simple moments are even more precious to Erin. Today she shares how her background in history and public humanities led her to explore the idea of ‘living small.’ I ask Erin about her gentle approach to self-improvement and how she defines courage within the context of being a parent. Listen in to learn how getting comfortable with uncertainty a big part of parenting, why she cautions against speaking about pregnancy in universal terms, and how you can embrace the ‘idyllic and beautiful’ moments in your life.

Achieve More by Doing Less — Episode #008 With Kate Northrup of the Origin Collective 

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Kate Northrup always knew she wanted to be a mother, and she pursued entrepreneurship partly because of the freedom it could afford her to be there for her kids. What Kate wasn’t counting on was the way pregnancy would change her drive and refocus her energy when it came to the business. She admits that it took her a long time to “get back in the game,” and that her husband and business partner, Mike, picked up the slack. But Kate credits having her daughter, Penelope, with initiating a personal evolution that allowed her to clarify her desires and ultimately renew her interest in the business and the way she thought about showing up for work in the first place. Perhaps there was something revolutionary here: because, as she shares in this episode, she found that she was able to achieve more even while doing less. And that some of her most productive weeks happened when she was working only 20 hours a week on the business. Today Kate shares her “shocking and awesome” birth experience, explaining how parenthood impacted her business as well as her marriage.

Why We’re Bad at Predicting How Parenthood Feels

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Often we choose not to do something because of how we think we’ll feel about it. But it turns out we’re not that great at understanding how something will actually feel—because we can’t account for how we, ourselves, will change in the process. Today we interview father of three kids under four, Mathias Jakobsen, the founder of Think Clearly, about his journey into parenting.

Why We Can’t Keep Having “Best of Entrepreneur” Lists That Are Overwhelmingly Male

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What do entrepreneurs actually look like? Entrepreneurs are a rich mix of women, people of color, old, young, and more — yet round-up lists perpetuate the idea that an “Entrepreneur” is defined solely as an ambitious white male. In fact, the latter is more true: women and people of color tend to embrace entrepreneurship at a disproportionate rate precisely because the landscape of creating a new organization in your vision is so compelling. Here’s why “best of” lists keep missing the mark.

Ambitious Introverts: Hiding in the Bathroom — Episode #005 With Morra Aarons-Mele

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Why do we only show outgoing, extroverted, and confident business people as the model for success? In a world where most successful entrepreneurs and business owners are afraid to show any weakness, Morra Aarons-Mele is a breath of fresh air. The mother of three kids and the founder of Women Online, an award-winning social impact agency, she’s a key fixture in the world of digital marketing, even though she does most of her work at home, in her yoga pants. She’s the author of “Hiding in the Bathroom: An Introvert’s Roadmap to Getting Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home),” and admits that we’re all just faking it. In her work, book, and this podcast she explores how to harness the power of your “onlyness” and make the work environment work for you.

The Future of Work (and Feminism) Is Flexible — Episode #002 With Annie Dean

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Thirty percent of talented women drop out of the workforce, not because they want to, but because the way work looks is outdated, flawed, and fails women and families on a regular basis. And a full 70% of those women would still be working if they had access to better (or any) workplace flexibility. What would it do for our economy and businesses if we weren’t losing so ambitious, committed employees so rapidly? The corporate world is stuck in a structural model that is a relic of the post-Industrial era. Today’s guest on the show is an entrepreneur building a simple, yet  revolutionary answer that makes the world fit women—rather than trying to make women fit into the world.

Things I’d Go Back and Tell My 24-Year Old Self

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I turn 34 this month, and I thought I’d go back and list all the things I wish my 24-year old self would have known. On the list? Take all the adventures you can. When in doubt, pick something, and then learn from the choosing. Stop trying to be perfect and well-liked, because that is certainly a fool’s errand. And I give my past self advice about money, sex, feminism, and trying to pick the “right” career.

The Startup Parent Podcast: Why & How the Show Started — Episode #001 with Mattan Griffel

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In this first episode, I give you a bit of the behind-the-scenes about why we started the show. When I interviewed at a Y Combinator backed startup in 2014, I was transparent about my desire and plans to start a family. Eight months in I was promoted to VP. One month later, I realized I was pregnant. The CEO, a great friend of mine, supported the entire process. Yet it still wasn’t what I expected. And that launched the start of a deeper desire to tell new stories about what it really takes to grow businesses and babies—and what’s been missing from the conversation. This podcast is the start of a conversation about the overlap between entrepreneurship, pregnancy, and parenting. Listen in to why we got started.

Building a Family-Friendly Startup

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Sara Mauskopf is the CEO and Co-founder of Winnie. She has a background in consumer technology and product management, having worked at Postmates, Twitter, YouTube, and Google. She graduated with a Computer Science and Engineering degree from MIT. She talks with us about how pregnancy and parenting changed her work, why she left to start her own company, and what Winnie does for parents.

How We Fail Our Friends The Most

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There is one thing that has disappointed me more about motherhood that I’ve been struggling to to put into words. It reveals the cracks and the gaps in the way we’ve built our society, in the way we culture, in the way we show up for each other.

“Just You Wait!”

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Why do people constantly caution you about what’s about to get worse? In one of the parenting groups I’m in, we started having a discussion about the phrase we always hear: “Just you wait.”

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