v8 The 18-Month Startup Race vs The 18-Year Parenting Clock

Startups run on 18-month cycles—that’s how much time a funding round buys you before you need to prove enough traction to raise the next one.

Parenting runs on 18-year cycles—that's how much time you have before your child grows up and builds a life of their own.

Both clocks are ticking. Both are finite, high-stakes, and full of pressure.

At work, I see how startups handle their 18-month runway—some use it strategically to build momentum, while others burn through it without clear direction. As a parent, I’ve started wondering: Am I doing the same thing with my 18-year runway at home?

The realization that both timeframes are short and non-refundable has reshaped the way I think about what truly matters—both at work and at home. Startups and parenting are both messy, unpredictable, and full of detours. Here’s what I’ve been learning.

Startups Run on 18-Month Funding Cycles

When a startup raises a funding round, it’s not just getting money—it’s buying time.

📌 What is runway?
Startup runway refers to how many months your business can keep operating before it’s out of money. But it’s more than just a countdown clock designed to stress founders out. Runway is a strategic tool. It shapes how you budget, forecast, and—most importantly—position your company to graduate to the next level of funding, scale, or profitability.

Every two weeks, the company gets one of only 36 sprints to prove real business progress before the next milestone.

A lot of startups focus on shipping products during these sprints—because product updates are tangible. Features get built. Demos look exciting. Progress feels real.

But I started looking at it differently.

Instead of just asking, What did we ship? I began thinking:
- What business progress did we make in this sprint?
- Are we closer to proving that we have a scalable model?
- Did we move toward long-term traction—or just stay busy?

VCs don’t just fund “cool features”—they fund momentum. The best startups don’t just burn through the runway trying to stay afloat; they use it to accelerate toward the next stage. The goal isn’t just to make it to the next round of funding—it’s to earn your way there with undeniable progress.

How to Spend Your 18 Months—Advice from the Startup Trenches

Once you understand your 18-month runway, the next big question is: How do you actually use it wisely?

After reading advice from VCs, founders, and startup veterans, here’s how different-stage startups can spend their 18 months:

Early-Stage Startups (Seed to Series A): Find the Signal, Ignore the Noise

📌 Your #1 job: Prove that you’re solving a problem people actually care about—not just that you can build a product.

• Obsess over product-market fit. Marc Andreessen says "The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit." (source) Nothing else matters at this stage
• Talk to customers more than you talk to investors. Early users hold the answers.
• Keep the burn rate in check. Mark Suster advises always having at least 12 months of cash in the bank (source).

Growth-Stage Startups (Series B and Beyond): Build the Machine, Not Just More Features

📌 Your #1 job: Scale smart—not just bigger, but better.

• Refine your go-to-market motion. Just because something worked at $1M ARR doesn’t mean it’ll work at $10M ARR. Fix your leaky funnel before you pour more into it.
• Hire deliberately. Keith Rabois emphasizes the importance of hiring elite teams. My interpretation of this philosophy is that “Hire like you’re filling an Olympic team, not a family”. 
• Prepare for the next raise (or profitability). Start tracking retention, NRR, and gross margins now—not when it’s time to pitch.

Red flag: If you’re throwing money at growth but retention is slipping, you’re scaling a leaky bucket. Fix it before it gets worse.

Parenting Runs on 18-Year Timeframes

At home, time moves differently. But the stakes feel just as high.

If you think of childhood as an 18-year runway, it’s staggering to realize:

• By the time your child is 5, you’ve already spent 28% of the years where they’ll be with you daily.
• By middle school, you’ve passed the halfway mark.
• And before you know it, they’ll be off—living lives where you’re no longer the center.

That perspective hit me hard.

Like most working parents, I juggle endless to-do lists—packing lunches, managing schedules, racing through bedtime routines. Some days, it feels like I’m just trying to get through everything.

But I don’t want to just grind through the weeks. I want to make them count.

And when I read about what parents regret most, it became even clearer:

📌Not being present enough—physically there, but mentally somewhere else.
📌 Rushing through childhood instead of appreciating each phase.
📌 Measuring parenting by productivity instead of connection.

That last one really struck me. Parenting isn’t about “getting things done.” It’s about showing up for the moments that actually matter.

How to Spend Parenting Time Like a Startup Spends Its Runway (Kind of)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working in startups, it’s this: No one has it all figured out.

You might think Startups are following a perfect roadmap, but the truth? We’re constantly adjusting, making trade-offs, pivoting when things don’t work, and hoping we don’t run out of time before we get it right.

Parenting isn’t so different.

There’s no perfect plan. No guaranteed formula. No “best practices” that work in every situation. And yet, just like startups only get so much runway, parents only get so many years before their kids grow up. So how do we spend that time wisely—without pretending we have it all figured out?

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about: In startups, you can’t do everything at once—you have to focus on what truly moves the needle. I’m realizing parenting works the same way.

• Define What Actually Matters. Instead of trying to be the perfect parent, I ask myself: What’s the one thing that matters most right now? Some years, it’s building trust. Other times, it’s fostering independence. Just like startups focus on one core metric at a time, I try to anchor my parenting around what’s most important in this stage.
• Sprints & Rituals: Small, Consistent Moments > Grand Gestures. Startups don’t succeed on one big launch—it’s the small, consistent sprints that create momentum. Parenting is the same. A bedtime check-in, a Sunday pancake tradition, or a school drop-off high-five matters more than any one big trip.
• Not All Moments Are Equal. Just like in startups, some things drive outsized impact. Kids won’t remember every car ride, but they will remember the moments when they felt heard, comforted, or celebrated. I try to be fully present in those high-impact moments—even if I don’t always get it right.
• Embracing Uncertainty. No startup follows a perfect roadmap, and no parent does either. Some weeks, I feel like I’m crushing it. Other weeks, I’m just trying to make it to bedtime. And that’s okay—because success in both startups and parenting isn’t about perfection. It’s about showing up, adapting, and making the time count.

The Best Startups—and the Best Parents—Make Their Time Count

• Startups don’t always have a clear roadmap, but they make each 18-month cycle build toward something bigger.
• Parents don’t have a perfect plan, but they make the weeks count by being intentional.

And maybe that’s enough.

How Time Shapes What We Prioritize

Once I saw time through these two lenses—18 months in startups, 18 years in parenting—everything shifted.

At work, I stopped only using feature releases as progress and started thinking about business progress.
At home, I stopped obsessing over productivity and started thinking about quality time.

The reality? Both require intentionality.

💡 In startups, we track key business metrics. In parenting, there are no dashboards—but we still need a way to check in. I started asking myself simple questions:
✔️ Did we laugh together today?
✔️ Did I pause long enough to listen—not just react?
✔️ Did I model the values I actually care about?

Some days, the answer is yes. Some days, I fall short. But at least now, I know what I’m measuring.

Final Thought: Are We Spending Time or Just Letting It Pass?

Startups measure time in runway—but so do our lives. The biggest difference?

📌 In startups, we fight to extend our time.
📌 In parenting, the time we have is fixed—we can only choose how to spend it.

Both are high-stakes, both are fleeting, and in both, the biggest risk isn’t failing—it’s realizing too late that you weren’t focused on what actually mattered.

So the real question isn’t how much time do we have left? It’s how will we use the time we still have?