u/Lopsided_Touch_4084

london. NHS-adjacent digital health platform. 53 GP practices on platform. founded at 44. just closed seed at 47.

writing this for the 14 dms i got after the seed announcement from women in their 40s and 50s asking what nobody writes about.

the part nobody writes about.

at 47 with a founder title nobody at investor meetings asks where i went to university. they ask what i did at the last 2 companies. that is a real benefit of starting later. credentials get replaced by track record. you do not pay the youth tax of having to prove you are smart. you pay the experience tax of having to prove the experience is recent.

at 47 with a founder title and a husband and 2 teenagers i don't pretend to work 80-hour weeks. nobody on my team asks. one of my investors asked at a recent meeting whether my husband (a barrister) is supportive. i told him my husband works longer hours than i do and we both do our share. the investor was satisfied. i resented the question. he is in his late 30s. he would not have asked a 47-year-old male founder.

at 47 with a founder title my pace is slower than my 31-year-old engineers' pace and they are watching it. i had a conversation with my CTO last month about how i needed her to push me on engineering decisions because i was going to default to "what worked at my last company." which is not always right. she was relieved i said it first.

at 47 with a founder title the comparison is not "could i have done this at 27." the comparison is "what would i have built at 27 with less reputation, less network, less capital, and the same energy." probably worse. probably not at all.

if you are 40-something and thinking about starting something the question is not "is it too late." it is "are you finally ready to use what you actually know."

i was. i wish i had started at 41..

I have been an EM at this company for four years. I went on leave in July after we shipped a platform migration I had led for eighteen months. Before I left I had a transition plan in place. I named the person who would cover for me. I documented every relationship. I drafted the comms.

Came back Monday. Did the usual catchup calls. Tuesday I asked my manager about the platform team's roadmap and he said "oh we moved that under [skip level]. He has been doing a great job. We figured it would be a soft return for you to take on something smaller for a quarter."

I held it together in the 1:1. Walked to the bathroom on the seventh floor where nobody goes. Cried for about twelve minutes. Came back and finished my afternoon.

The team is mine. The migration is mine. The skip level is a guy I hired two years ago. He is good. He has been "filling in" since November.

The thing that nobody tells you about maternity leave is that the cost is not the missed quarter. The cost is the assumption your absence proves you were replaceable. They built the case while I was at home recovering from a c-section.

I am writing this from my kitchen on a Saturday morning. My daughter is asleep. I have three weeks to decide if I want to spend the next six months "earning back" the team I built or if I want to start interviewing somewhere that will hire me at a level that matches what I know I am worth.

I do not have a question for the community. I just needed to put this somewhere other than my notes app at 2am.

edit: thank you for the responses. reading them while feeding the baby. this happened to so many of you. that is its own kind of grief.