BackThe parent trap
Parents of first-generation founders struggle with how to react when their well-paid, well-educated children leave the safety of good jobs to start their own companies
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When Prashant Sinha quit his “big-company" marketing job at insurance company Aviva to co-found MyCity4Kids, an online children’s service provider, in 2010, his Jamshedpur-based parents were flabbergasted. Sinha had been bred on his parents’ steely resolve, characteristic of a project township teeming with engineers, to ensure their children flourished in solid government jobs or lucrative private ones. “Business was taboo for them; both, looked down upon and feared," he says. That he was trying to do something in digital (much less understood five years back), and wanted to build a business around children—without having any of his own then—seemed to them to be an idea custom-built for doom.
The buzz around entrepreneurship has created new founders and ventures at a brisk pace; it’s also left in its wake proud but often very anxious parents. Parents of first-generation founders especially, getting used to a world where business is haloed not reviled, struggle with how to react when their well-paid, well-educated children leave the safety of good jobs to start their own companies. There’s scepticism of success and fear of failure at work, as well as an inability to understand their children’s motivation to rock the boat and seek a change so drastic.
“Get another job that is exciting if you’re bored" is something many parents say they have suggested to their children. “It’s a tough spot to be in: How do you love somebody but not want to support them," says a Delhi-based parent whose son left a banking job to turn entrepreneur with a venture in food.
The rhythm of business doesn’t help. As it happens, the high tides of parental worry—the months immediately after leaving a job or forsaking a campus placement—coincide with the seemingly low-activity (no clients, no employees, often, no office) phase of building a business. In the first 18 months of starting out, Sinha confesses his parents’ uncontrolled anxiety got to him. He began to avoid their phone calls. “In their worry and ignorance, they would ask me the same questions in every conversation. It was frustrating."
“Reporting significant progress would’ve helped ease my parent’s doubts but giving updates is a pain because there often isn’t much to report in the early days," adds a former principal at consulting services company Accenture, who now runs an employment exchange for the bottom of the pyramid.
The reassurances parents are most likely to seek (revenue numbers, a fixed plan to reach defined targets, a founder’s salary and the number of clients) aren’t answers the founders usually have either. An uncomfortable defensiveness comes in, manifested in a testy undercurrent that stops both sides from voicing their fears and frustrations.
Parents worry more as the updates get vague and less forthcoming; even more, they fret about a shrinking-from-the-world, so characteristic of the hunkered-down phase of starting out. “My parents were convinced I was depressed and regretted my decision to start out," a young entrepreneur recalls of the first six months of working on the beta version of his education-technology start-up from his parent’s living room.
Some of the disbelief comes from the inability to grasp the universe of new economy businesses. “I don’t see my son out chasing clients. He works from home in his shorts—successful businesses don’t get built out of a laptop," says a harried parent whose son left a consulting job for a venture in the loyalty mobile space.
Families are at once influencers, beneficiaries and collateral damage of entrepreneurship. Yet their vantage view of how businesses are built isn’t explored, or documented, enough. As co-travellers along the start-up juggernaut, an entrepreneur’s family faces several double binds; for one, they rarely get a chance at navigation yet have to buckle up for a ride they aren’t sure has either a fixed direction or a specific destination.
Every fortnight, Surviving Start-ups will focus on the stories of the people (parents, siblings, spouses and friends) who make up an entrepreneur’s world. It will highlight their struggle and anxiety, and the joy from seeing people they love come up with useful ideas. Their learnings offer a ringside view of how companies are built while living with the “founder types".
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