Working From Home Will Create a New Generation of Younger Entrepreneurs
The new reality of Covid-19 forces us all to shift to a new mode of working from home (WFH). If we were used to run meetings face to face in meeting rooms, or even find some quiet place to have a video call in a booth at the office, now each of us has to adapt to the new reality and open our homes to our colleagues and customers. Different people experience this change differently. Some are young and live with flatmates that are working from home as well and create a mini office at the flat, some live alone and find themselves sitting all day long in front of their laptops without real human interaction. In my case, both my wife and I are working from home and having our son with us during the whole day.
I’ll be honest, it’s not always great fun when both my wife and I are in calls and Ari is calling us at the background, but most of the time, I find it a great experience. My team knows Ari and he attends standups, and other meetings when he is not busy playing with his yellow bus or puzzles. There are some funny occasions where I am in serious meeting about product planning and suddenly Ari pushes his face into my computer camera. The great thing about this is that it is authentic. Being a father is a huge part of me and my life which makes me a better person and a better entrepreneur. I also find it easier to manage disruption during those calls and unexpected appearances of Ari in those events since I’m used to uncertainty and he is definitely unexpected.
There is another amazing benefits for Ari being with me on calls, see me do and attend webinars and seeing my interactions with my fellow teammates. He gets to see what I’m doing, he hears what I’m saying and he gets to learn many things he would not be exposed of if I wasn’t working from home. Although he is only 2.5 year old, he comes and asks me questions about the app I’m working on and even knows how to start and mainly exit a video call (even if I don’t really want to do that). He gets to hear words like startups, entrepreneurship, scale and many more terms I use constantly in my job.
It’s not the first time Ari is exposed to these, since from a very early age he used to go with his mom to meet-ups and hear us talk about this at home. One of the main things that I want to do as a father is to inspire Ari to do whatever he has passion to do. In order to do that, I think he should really see what I am passionate about and who know maybe the entrepreneurial bug will be charming for him as it is for me — but it’s his choice.
It is our responsibility as parents to be open with our children and inspire them to learn and grow by not only sending them to school, or even read them books. The best way is to inspire them to learn and try new things by taking them along with us on the journeys we are taking and the great things we are doing not only at home but also at work. I heard Naveen Jain founder and CEO of Viome and a great entrepreneur whom all of his children tuned out to become successful young entrepreneurs that he used to take them with him to events, meetings and his work so for them it was natural to go and build a startup and become entrepreneurs.
If we look forward to the future, this time of Covid-19 gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to take their children along with them on their entrepreneurial journeys. I hope that this will follow in a young and inspired generation of entrepreneurs that saw their parents in action building solutions to solve big problems, building teams and companies in their home environment. I hope that from being a part of it they will grow to be hungry and passionate to solve bigger problems, build greater startups. Let’s raise another great generation of builders and innovators by opening up and take advantage of this opportunity to inspire our kids to become builders.
Please share or comment. Would love to learn how you engage your children in your entrepreneurial journeys.
