True Confessions. I’m the full time COO of a startup. I have six kids. My friend from Austin calls it my own personal militia.

There’s a boatload of scalability lessons I’ve learned from my militia that translate to my startup. And lest anyone think my business has anything to do with estrogen, it’s a tech startup in a completely male dominated sector. I simply have the unfair advantage of being a militia mom. My competition hasn’t got a chance.

1. Use your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to prove out your model 
2. Pivot when needed
3. Gain traction in one vertical before chasing every idea thrown at you
4. Empower your team
5. Design your platform with scalability in mind
6. Timing is everything
7. You will occasionally get peed on
8. Optimize your expenses
9. Get into a good incubator
10. Be the Boss

For now, I’ll touch on MVP – or as I called him, my firstborn child. We used our MVP to prove out our parenting methods. Little did we know that this perfectly awesome child had less to do with our parenting methods and more to do with the grace of God. This will of course bring us to the point about pivoting. For our MVP parenting method, we went with the sage advice of a friend, “Treat your first like he’s your third and you’ll be just fine.”

In business terms, the MVP allows you to go to market with an idea, perhaps tangible, that you can test in the market. The important question is not whether anyone wants or likes your product. Who cares? You need to know whether they will actually pay enough for your product to make it worthwhile. Our startup’s MVP has been called one of the most ugly landing pages ever created. And yet… we had people begging to buy our product before it even existed. Not a bad start.

In parenting terms, taking your MVP to a fancy restaurant proves out whether your parenting sucks or you need to pivot. If the waiter offers you dessert right after the appetizer if you’ll simply leave, your method sucked, you’ve raised a tyrant and it’s time to pivot. If kids in the neighborhood are undercutting each other’s babysitting rates for the privilege of watching your child, we have a winner.