From Startup Baby to Teen Titan: Mansi Panchal’s Take on Parenting Your Business as an Entrepreneur

 When I first started interning under Mansi Panchal at FounderX, I quickly realized how much entrepreneurship really feels like parenting. Everyone loves calling their business their “baby,” and for good reason, those early days are magical. The first sale, the first thrilled client, the first sleepless night that somehow feels worth it. It’s all charm and excitement.

But Mansi was quick to warn me that this baby phase doesn’t last forever. One day, you wake up and your sweet little venture has morphed into a full-blown teenager - messy, unpredictable, and a bit of a pain. Scaling stops being cute. It becomes chaotic, emotional, and sometimes straight-up disrespectful.

This is the real talk I’ve absorbed working alongside her. Running a business beyond that initial startup spark is not just about hustle and passion anymore. It’s about managing growing pains, the kind nobody posts about on Instagram. Mansi described this stage as being a “business mom in the rawest sense”: putting out fires at midnight, rewriting SOPs on the go, juggling meetings, and questioning if you’re doing it right.

What resonated with me most was her perspective on how founders need to change their leadership style as their business grows. You can’t parent a teenager the way you parent a toddler. Similarly, you can’t run a scale-up like a fledgling startup. Micromanagement that worked early on now suffocates growth. At the same time, chaos can sneak in where structure is lacking.

Mansi’s approach is to pull back where control chokes progress, and double down where chaos threatens to spiral out of control. This means coaching instead of commanding, mentoring instead of micromanaging, and showing up even when things get uncomfortable. Because the business will test your patience, push your limits, and stretch your leadership but it’s not broken. It’s evolving.

Her advice feels like a blueprint for any entrepreneur trying to navigate that messy middle. 

The stage where you’re growing but barely keeping up. Your team needs clarity but resists change. Your operations crack under pressure. Your customers multiply but your backend struggles to keep pace.

This phase can feel overwhelming, but Mansi’s words gave me a fresh lens: if your business feels unrecognizable right now, that’s a good sign. It means it’s moving forward, growing into something bigger. Your job isn’t to make it perfect. It’s to show up. To guide. To stay obsessed with the vision even when the day-to-day looks like madness.

As I prepare to launch my own venture someday, these lessons from Mansi Panchal have become my anchor. I now know that success doesn’t come from avoiding the chaos but from learning to parent your business through its awkward, rebellious, and beautiful teenage years.

The messy middle isn’t where businesses die, it’s where leaders are built.

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