Work-life balance is passe. Founders must focus more on work-life harmony
Loney Antony’s entrepreneurial journey was measured in long, hard yards. The 2008 financial crisis struck shortly after Sequoia India invested in his company, Prizm Payment Services. He had to work twice as hard before the business began to hit the kind of scale we all knew it could achieve. And for every hard yard that Antony walked, so did his family. At a celebratory dinner in 2014 (when Prizm was sold to Hitachi), Antony’s wife, Pushpa, made a short speech that struck a deep chord with me. After congratulating the company’s founders and the management team, she shared the unvarnished truth about the sacrifices made: long hours, lost moments, and how much their two sons had missed their father during their critical teenage years.
She knew what her husband had set out to do and supported him all the way. It was all worthwhile, she said, but it was also incredibly tough. Her candor brought to the fore the invaluable role that the unsung heroes play in a successful founder journey. It also underscored the continual challenge that founders face in finding time for their family. Work-life balance is not a realistic goal for any entrepreneur. What many young founders are now talking about instead is work-life harmony. They’re focusing on the quality (and not just quantity) of time spent on the key aspects of their lives to help them fulfill their vision of what they want to achieve as a partner, parent, and entrepreneur. What's exciting about the Asian tech scene in 2018 By sharing this post we want to encourage more folks in the ecosystem to come forward and share their experiences. Over the last few months, we chatted with a number of entrepreneurs on this topic. Here are some useful tips from founders on what they’re doing to find that harmony read more