Andy Aitken of Honest Mobile took paternity leave during a £3.2 million funding round
When it comes to parental leave, startup founders face something of a conundrum. Here in the United Kingdom, new mothers are entitled to 52 weeks maternity leave, 39 of them paid according to a statutory formula. Fathers are entitled to two weeks paid and 18 unpaid. In addition, a company may choose to offer a more generous deal. But what about founders? There’s a tendency for those who establish companies to consider themselves indispensable, particularly in the early days of a business. So what happens when a new baby arrives? How much time should a founder spend away from the coal face and what can be done to ensure that everything runs smoothly in his or her absence, perhaps at a crucial time?
It’s a question that arose when I spoke last week to Andy Aitken, co-founder of telecoms company Honest Mobile. With negotiations for a £3.2 million funding round still in train, he took two weeks of paternity leave and would encourage others to do the same. Following on from that conversation, I asked Aitken and other U.K. founders about their parental leave experiences.
Launched in 2019 by Aitken and Johsua MiHill, Honest Mobile has sought to carve out a niche in the U.K.’s mobile phone market by offering a SIM-only service that promises to cut rather than raise the monthly bills of long-term users. By 2023, it was serving a relatively modest 4,000 customers, but Aitkin says that number has now more than doubled.
In other words, this is a small but growing company operating in a market dominated by Britain’s big four telecom providers - namely Three, EE, Vodafone and O2. Like many other telecom businesses, the company provides services by piggybacking on existing networks and focuses on providing a distinct customer service offering.
Social Credentials
Part of that offer is focused on the company’s environmental and social credentials. “We decided right at the beginning we wanted to be a B-Corp and we wanted to be carbon neutral,” says Aitken. “We saw that as a way of setting out our intentions and establishing our credibility.
One of the B-Corp application questions requires aspirant businesses to state their parental leave policy. That wasn’t something that Aitken was thinking about in a personal capacity at the time but he says the B-Corp process meant the company adopted a clear position at an early stage. “At a time when we had six to eight employees, the team knew what we were thinking,” he says.
As things turned out, Aitken was the first member of the team to take advantage of the policy.”
No Doubts About Taking Time Off
And as he recalls, he had no doubts about stepping back - initially for two weeks. “When you become a parent, you should take time off,” he asserts.
There are, however, practical challenges that are unique to small businesses. “If you are in a company that employs 500 people, you can take time off and nobody notices. In a small company of six people your absence is noticed,” Aitken says.
That’s perhaps particularly true if the company is in the midst of a funding round but as Aitken stresses, taking a few weeks out to look after a newborn child is not the same as leave taken in response to an emergency, such as sudden illness or bereavement. “It is predictable,” says Aitken. “You have a due date. You know what is going on in the business and you can plan.”
So Aitken felt able to take an initial two weeks. The arrangement was that if anything urgent came up, he could be contacted at home and would respond, although in reality his input wasn’t required. “We had a term sheet, so it wasn’t stressful and nor were we bogged down in legal matters, so it was a calm time to go off.”
It’s All In The Preparation
Preparation was needed. Like most founders, Aitken - a former accountant - was pretty hands-on, particularly when it came to matters such as customer relations and billing. “When the time came to send out bills to customers, I clicked the button. So we had to train people to do that. I think it is important to plan but it is more important for the team than it is for you.”
So what does the planning process actually involve? Siobhan Byrne is co-founder of Bonded, a digital advertising agency, established three years ago and based in the northeast of England. Currently on maternity leave, she stresses the importance of ensuring that processes are in place.
“I’ve found that leaving easy-to-follow processes for the team has benefited not only them but also made it easier for me to catch up when I come back to work for a few days. While I won’t be back at work for a few months, this has given me peace of mind that everyone is happy with their delivery work while I’m away."
Byrne recommends delegating to multiple people rather than passing on a potentially overwhelming amount of work to one or two individuals. In addition, says it may be necessary to bring new people on board.
“Hire any gaps arising from your absence,” she says. “I ensured we had a new hire in place before I left for maternity leave and this resulted in me being more comfortable as I knew the team had enough time in the day to deliver on client projects.”
Talking to Investors
That’s the internally-facing side, but what about investors? In the case of Honest Mobile Aitken says there was a positive response not only from investors but also suppliers and customers. Indeed, he took inspiration from one investor whose out-of-office message announced he was on parental leave and that more people should do the same.
Lulu O’Connor, is founder of clothing care company Clothes Doctor. Since establishing the business, she has had two children - the first during a funding round in 2022. As she recalls, getting investors on side was critical.
“Ahead of the first, I worked very hard to nail down my lead investor,” she says. “I knew that filling the round after the baby would be much easier if I had that first critical step sorted. It also made it less stressful going into maternity leave knowing that it was sorted. Luckily the investor who ended up committing to lead the round was a very ‘female founder friendly’ organization who didn’t balk at the sight of a heavily pregnant founder pitching to them - quite the opposite in fact.”
However, O’Connor says that parental leave can result in certain trade-offs, including an acceptance that the business might not grow so quickly, at least for a period.
“In terms of the day-to-day running of the business, I had to be realistic that growth was going to slow a little while I closed the raise alongside looking after my new baby. At that stage, most day-to-day operations were still going through me, but I did what I could to delegate where possible in advance and give people extra responsibilities to help share the load,” she says.”By the time my second baby was due, the business was a little larger and we had more team heads able to take some of the workload, but even then, we did have to accept a bit of a slower growth period.”
Paternity or Maternity leave may not be at the top of an entrepreneur’s mind on the day a company is started, but there is certainlyu a requirement to make provision for employees and that in turn involves a certain amount of planning that can apply to founders too. And when a new child arrives, every founder should feel comfortable about taking time off, so it is worthwhile thinking ahead.
