When pitching an investor, I got a question that stopped me in my tracks. Here’s how I wish I had responded—and what it taught me about proving the doubters wrong.
The meeting started just like any other.
I was pitching Jam—an AI-powered family calendar and management platform that I co-founded with my sister—to a potential investor.
He was a founder himself, and as a dad of three (including a newborn baby), he was well-versed in the chaos and mental load of family life that we were trying to solve: the Tetris-style logistics of who’s going where and endless ticker tape of things to track and remember.
Related: Working dads: The term we all need—and why it helps working moms too
But when we got toward the end of the meeting, the question he asked stopped me in my tracks.
“You know, being a founder is a 24/7 job. But you’re both moms. With kids at home.” He paused for a moment, before turning the wrench. “Do you really want to spend that much time working? Because that’s what you’d need to do to make it a success. Are you sure this is something you really want to do right now?”
The irony was staggering: a father questioning our bandwidth to build the very tool designed to ease the mental load mothers disproportionately carry. (Especially considering he was currently building his own company with an eight-week-old baby at home!)
I wish I could say I gave him a snappy reply that made him realize just how sexist and condescending he was being, but the truth is, I was too surprised by how brazenly he dared suggest that motherhood and career ambition were incompatible.
Instead, I moved to end the meeting quickly. I knew I could never have a person with these values as an investor. And I didn’t even bother wasting my breath trying to convince him otherwise.
Facing the quiet assumptions of motherhood
I’d be lying if I said that interaction didn’t shake me—and make me start thinking deeply about just how pervasive the bias to dismiss mothers is across our society, and particularly in the workplace.
Because this wasn’t just about startups or venture capital. It’s the same question mothers get in doctor’s offices when concerns are dismissed as “normal mom worry.” It’s the boss who assumes you’ve “checked out” after maternity leave. It’s the family member who wonders if this is really the “right time” for your next big step.
He could launch a new business with two kids and a newborn because he had a wife. Someone who, even though she worked outside of the home too, handled all the mental load of their household.
He wanted to know: Where’s your wife? Who’s going to do all the work at home you would usually be doing?
His question echoed in all the quiet assumptions I’d felt before—and still feel, constantly—in both of my identities as a mom and a professional.
Like when I (and so many working moms) are often asked on work trips, “Who’s watching your kids?”—while our husbands never seem to get those questions when they arrive at an out-of-town conference.
Or the father who leaves work early for a T-ball game and is seen as a devoted family man, while the mother who does the same raises eyebrows, as those around her (in the office, in the bleachers, and beyond) question if she’s “spread too thin.”
It’s the bias I see when a male founder puts up a LinkedIn post about packing his kids’ lunches during a busy work week (and getting celebrated in the comments for it), when working moms who do that day in and day out would never think to publicly brag about that fact.
The “motherhood penalty” is well documented—we earn less, are passed over more, and are often assumed to be less committed the minute we have a child. Meanwhile, men experience the opposite: the “fatherhood bonus.” A woman’s value (and the value of her time) diminishes when she becomes a mother, while a man’s only increases.
In setting out to build my own business (and one that set out to abolish that mental load double standard on women!), I was hoping to sidestep the bias. Instead, I stepped right into it.
Building a vision of success that works for everyone
The investor’s comment didn’t just touch upon his own internal judgments. It touched against something I’d subconsciously absorbed from the world as well—the myth that success only happens one way. We have to go all in, grind it out, be available 24/7, act like we don’t have a personal life at all.
And that if we can’t do that—because we’re caregiving, or managing a household, or just human—then we won’t have what it takes to succeed.
But that version of success omits most people in the world, especially women and moms. It doesn’t leave space for anyone caring for a child, an aging parent, a partner facing illness, or even for our own health and humanity.
Not for anyone who’s ever had to pause a meeting to pick up a sick kid or pump in between conference calls or mentally juggle childcare while trying to hold a vision for a team.
And it makes so many of us give up before we even get a chance to start and prove that narrative wrong.
Proving the doubters wrong—and how you can, too
That’s why my sister and I built Jam—not just to help ourselves stay afloat, but to help other caregiving parents divide the mental load more equally and reduce the burden that quietly drives so many brilliant women out of the workforce. Jam is our way of saying: there is another way. We can drive more equality in the home and make room for a different kind of ambition. A sustainable one. A human one.
If I was going to answer that investor now, I know what I’d say—that, to borrow some tech jargon, being a mom isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. It’s not the thing that will hold me back, but the reason why I will succeed. All while my three sons watch me do it.
And that first round I was trying to get investors for? We filled it pretty soon thereafter, with enough funds to build and launch our company. The investors weren’t all female, and they weren’t all parents, but they all had one thing in common: they, too, believed motherhood was an asset for us, not a liability.
For anyone with that same “Are you sure this is the right time?” doubt swirling in their head — whether it’s about a career goal, a personal dream, or a big life change — remember this: you don’t need to earn the right to go after what you want. The right time is now.
Related: Working moms have to look out for one another—because no one else will
About the author
Jessica Koosed Etting is the co-founder of Jam, a smart family management app that streamlines the logistics of modern family life and reduces the mental load. Prior to founding Jam, Jessica worked in the entertainment industry for over 20 years, focusing on female-forward storytelling. Jessica resides in Los Angeles with her family, is passionate about gender equality in and out of the home, and can frequently be found searching for her sons’ missing shin guards.