As Picnik became profitable in 2009, it officially emerged from startup company infancy into childhood. It was a banner year with many great milestones, but perhaps the most exciting achievement was when four couples at the company birthed real babies within six weeks of each other. As I speculated on what might have been in Picnik’s drinking water in the winter of 2008, it dawned on me that startups and babies share some fundamental similarities. As I am barely out of the fog of new fatherhood (our new son Holden is six months old), I offer the following eight observations.

1. Doing a startup, and having a baby make you utterly and incredibly tired. So be prepared.

The effects of prolonged fatigue are: loss of short-term memory, loss of vocabulary, and general difficulty sustaining concentration in problem solving. Just whack 20 percent off your IQ. To be clear, I faced these problems BEFORE I had Holden, probably starting about one year after Picnik began.

There was no end to the urgent things to be on top of, and I struggled to keep up. When Holden arrived three years later, I experienced another drop. But, luckily, it was not another doubling but a mere negative 20 percent drop. Both startups and babies will tax and strain your resources to the hilt.

The silver lining is that the human body/mind are incredibly resilient. You simply normalize to functioning with compromised faculties. You also become incredibly intolerant of inefficiency and time wastage during the day. And, yes, you daydream of more sleep, more coffee and quieter days.

2. "Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and make it completely your own.”

I’m mangling an old quote from Bruce Lee. But the sentiment is simply that with both startups and babies, you must be fluid (“Be like water my friend”). With startups, there will be an endless procession of people who will tell you the "proper way" to do things. Sometimes it’s a genuine heartfelt mapping of their past successes onto your current situation.

The avalanche of info is overwhelming. Your job is to neither reject nor accept at face value, but to filter what applies.

You might get a great nugget of advice from your advisory board. And you might get tips from other parents on breast feeding. Be like water my friends. Make the process your own.

3. To achieve success with startups and babies, one must “learn the art of dying.”

The "art of dying" is an old Japanese samurai philosophy which says that the best way to win in battle, is to first study, understand and be at peace with death.

I mean this on three levels. The first is simply: don’t fear failure because you WILL screw-up a couple of things. At the very least, don’t let the fear of screwing up keep you from moving forward.

The second -- and related thought is -- to give up on the idea that you can control everything. Give yourself a margin of error on the secondary priorities. Both babies and startups are very very messy. You will need to be at peace with some things simply being imperfect.

You also must be willing to accept that both your baby and your startup may not turn out the way you had hoped. I think everyday about the disappointment my mother felt when I told her that I was not going on to law school (I think she is finally OK with that now). Similarly, your startup may take an unexpected turn.

4. Doing a startup, and having a baby is like landing on a new planet where -- once you arrive -- you can’t ever imagine being anywhere else.

I have to admit, I LOVE fatherhood. It’s the best and most fun thing I have ever done. I also LOVE doing startups. It’s incredibly rewarding. In the same way that I can’t imagine not doing startups, I can’t imagine not being a father and the resultant loss to my identity and life goals on both fronts.

That said, I would say that personally, fatherhood does seem to edge out the startup lifestyle. (That will be my one shameless plug for parenthood: If you’re on the fence, go for it!)

Your relationship with your spouse will change in wonderful ways. You may learn that you have a capacity for unconditional love that challenges all previous assumptions around your existing relationships with friends and family.

With startups, it’s exactly the same. Lots of people have coffee with me and ask: “Should I take the plunge and do my dream startup idea?”

I always say yes. Once you do a startup, it's hard to imagine doing anything else. The many life skills and lessons learned constitute the most valuable education one could possibly receive.

These lessons -- regarding business, growing teams, taking thoughtful risks and creating value -- transform you. You will be an entirely different person.

5. He who controls his emotions, controls his startup or child.

There’s an old Warren Buffet saying: "He who controls his emotions controls his money."

In the earliest months of a baby, there is no shortage of ways that you may be tempted to yield to your emotions at the expense of your child’s development. An example of this is the ‘emotional friction’ associated with getting your baby on to a consistent sleep cycle, a sleep cycle that ultimately results in the child sleeping longer and YOU sleeping more:)

It's really not that hard, but what interrupts the consistency are N number of emotional obligations; hosting visiting family and neighbors at random hours that interrupt nap time, your desire to always be with the child and engage in play and social activity even when the child needs to nap, and finally in the later months not allowing the child to self-soothe herself to sleep by picking her up at every initial squawk or cry. All of these things are generally not ‘bad’ things per se (and we are hard-wired to do them as caring parents) But my wife and I have found that knowing when to be more "schedule oriented" vs. "response oriented" has resulted in a consistency and ease in our routine with Holden at a fairly early stage. (Knock on wood).

A startup is just the same (and I can probably write a whole post on separating emotion from decision making in new startups). You will be confronted with a number of things that will test your patience: behavior near anger thresholds, desire to succeed, heartbreak over lost partnerships, willingness to take risks, etc.

But, at the end of the day, it’s simply about focusing on scaling traffic and scaling revenue. Everything else is just noise. Once you have the fundamentals (a great product that results in great traffic and revenue), most everything else will fall into place. In the meantime, stay cool and be a class act.

5. With babies and start-ups, lots of people will give you advice.

Most of it won’t apply to you, including this guest post.

6. It takes a village to raise a child/startup.

Hillary Clinton first popularized this African proverb. When Holden was born, neighbors whom we had never met in 12 years came by to drop off food and clothes. Collegial but loose business contacts from across the country sent useful gifts (toys, clothes). We became members of a local PEPS group and tapped into a great network of new parents, all eager to share tips and support each other.

Picnik also would not be where it is today were it not for the support of a very robust Seattle startup community that is constantly sharing and communicating. If I had a dollar for every time another startup CEO offered a helpful tidbit of advice to me, I’d be broke. If it were not for the existence of Picnik’s extended village, we would not be where we are today.

7. It takes awhile before it becomes really fun.

With startups and babies it can be pretty darn fun immediately. But it gets REALLY REALLY fun after you come out of "the fog."

With babies the fog is the first few months or so when you are absolutely terrified and utterly sleep deprived. You can’t even think far ahead enough to make dinner. Then as you slowly emerge and the child becomes more interactive, the fog starts to disappear. They start social smiling back at you. They start becoming your little buddy. They may even foster for you a larger sense of "place in the universe" as you observe first hand how the human mind develops, and how we all start out pretty much the same -- pure, unafraid and full of potential. Without knowing it consciously, you will begin to tie your personal day-to-day happiness with that of your child’s.

Startups are no different. You will have your tireless "fog" in the first few months, crunching to finish version one of your product. You will be riddled with uncertainty over your products resonance in the marketplace. You will (and should) be highly skeptical of your assumed revenue model.

For others, there might be a tireless road show to raise money. This is not the fun part. This is the part where you have the least clarity on what things will really be like.

The fun part is when both traffic and revenue achieve traction. That’s when you have all kinds of knobs and levers to tweak. That’s also when users tell you they love the product and have constructive feedback to make it even better.

You better understand your startup’s "place in the universe" and the real value it is bringing to the users you reach. For right or wrong, you will also start to tie the feedback from the marketplace to your job satisfaction (i.e. good days at work equals conversion rate going up, traffic going up, or great press reviews).

8. Names are enabling. Choose wisely.

Years ago, I read a child development psychologist’s thesis that names of babies are highly enabling. Babies with "smart names" might become more studious children. Babies with unorthodox spellings -- or highly unique names -- become the fringe kids who identify as different and question authority by default. It’s probably all B.S., but its no wonder that baby naming is an entire industry in itself.

Arguably naming an Internet startup is even MORE affecting of success or failure. Users have to actually type in your URL into a browser. So, it better be memorable, easy to spell, somewhat descriptive of what it does and supportive of brand values.

Naming our product Picnik became one simple and inherent advantage over many of our other competitors who are named: Fauxto, Phixr, Flauntr, Fotoflexer, Pixenate and Photoshop.com. Picnik had an advantage simply being memorable, easy to spell, and descriptive of its brand values.

Conclusion:

Simply put, creating either a startup or a baby will cause you to become a completely different person. And frankly, you may find that you spend most of your time hiding this fact from others. The changes will be subtle to those who don’t know you well. But on the inside your priorities have completely and unequivocally shifted.

Enjoy this time. A sage CEO who took his company public once told me: “Ah… the startup years. Remember those fun times.”

Yep. I plan on it, right after I read Holden another bedtime story.

[Editor's note: My wife and I just had our first child, and we will be applying some of Jonathan's tips to our new "startup." --John Cook]

Photos via Wikimedia.

Jonathan Sposato is the CEO of Picnik, an online photo editing startup based in Seattle. Guest posts are the opinions of their authors and don't necessarily reflect those of TechFlash or its staff. Have an idea for a guest post of your own? Tell us about it at techflashtips@bizjournals.com