• Martins Lasmanis, the founder of Supliful, struggles with balancing startup growth and family time.
• Supliful quickly gained traction, and Lasmanis began working 16-hour days with three young kids.
• He now schedules family time and delegates work to manage 'dad guilt' and improve work-life balance.

My youngest son turned 3 this year — the same age as my startup, Supliful. As I watched my toddler playing on his birthday, I felt a strong sense of guilt creep up inside me. He wasn't a baby anymore, and I realized I'd missed out on him growing up.

"They grow up so fast!" is what all parents say. That day, this cliché suddenly felt terrifyingly real. Even worse — it felt as if, over the past three years, I'd spent more time growing my startup than paying attention to my children growing up.

That feeling was torturous

I've always wanted two things in life: a big family and my own business. Family is where I find peace and joy, and I find self-fulfillment in business. I've never been able to sit still and must be in constant motion.

In 2021, when I became a father of three and founder of a newly launched startup, I felt I was on the right path. My life goals were being met. I was nailing it.

While I didn't expect raising three kids and building a company from scratch would be easy, I didn't worry much either. I had already been there — a few years prior, I was running a successful online store while raising two preschoolers. I thought I had the experience necessary to handle the new responsibilities.

I was wrong

I soon realized my new venture had much more potential and was more complex and demanding than anything I had built before.

When I attracted serious interest from VC investors, my company was still in its ideation phase. We onboarded hundreds of users just three weeks after making our product public. By our second year in business, we were already making over $1M in revenue.

Success came with challenges and new responsibilities. I had to quickly grow our team, onboard new partners, and open a new fulfillment center on the other side of the world to ensure quality service to our clients — all while ensuring we didn't run out of money.

I spent my days on back-to-back calls with investors, business partners, and new hires. In the evenings, I sometimes had to help my colleagues pack and send out orders. I'd regularly travel between our office in Europe and the fulfillment center in Denver, feeling guilty for leaving my family behind every time.

My wife was extremely understanding

Throughout our 13 years together, my wife has always supported me. Although she wasn't happy about me staying late in the office or leaving for another business trip, she always encouraged me to pursue my career goals.

Without realizing it, my working days got longer. At one point, I worked 12 hours a day and sometimes as many as 16 hours.

I still tried to be as hands-on as possible with my kids. My wife and I had our own caregiving "shifts" — I covered mornings and after-work, taking the kids to and from school and day care. My wife handled the evening, taking care of dinner and putting the three to bed. We all tried to spend time together between dinner and my late work calls.

Eventually, a dreaded day came

"Daddy, you're working too much." My 7-year-old daughter caught me off guard. We had just finished our dinner one evening in September, and I prepared to disappear into my home office for another round of calls and emails. I responded "I know. I'm trying to build this business, but I should be more present with you."

I realized I was experiencing an enormous feeling of guilt — the feeling of failing as a parent because I wasn't there for my kids. While I saw my tight work schedule as a sprint that would eventually end, my kids only saw me working.

I had heard about "mom guilt," a term often used to describe the feeling women have when they believe they're not meeting their own or others' expectations in their role as parents.

I felt "dad guilt" — the dark side of entrepreneurship and many other demanding jobs requiring long hours. Every day, I feel guilty for not prioritizing my children or failing to build my startup.

I wish I had an easy fix to make this all balance out

I don't have a solution, but I have found a few things that make the weight easier to carry.

I make it a point to schedule family time on my calendar and never cancel it. I treat it as seriously as any work meeting and make a real effort to be present.

I set high standards, but I've had to remind myself that perfection isn't real. Sometimes, I take stock of the good I've done, balancing it against the areas I wish to improve. Reminding myself of these positives helps me feel more at peace with where I am.

I've delegated more work to my team, allowing me to spend more time with my kids this past month. We're moving to the US next year, so that will be another adventure.

Through it all, I'm beyond grateful for my wife. She's my best friend, and her unwavering support allows me to pursue my entrepreneurial dreams.

• Ryan Reynolds opened up about the future of "Deadpool."
• He explained that producing the Marvel action-comedy "swallows" his "whole life."
• He added that he didn't want to miss out on spending time with his 4 kids, whom he shares with Blake Lively.

Ryan Reynolds is feeling the dad guilt.

On today's episode of Variety's "Actors on Actors" with Andrew Garfield, the actor opened up about balancing work and parenting.

When Garfield asked Reynolds what the future of "Deadpool" looks like, Reynolds said he didn't know. "My feeling is that that character works very well in two ways: one is scarcity and surprise."

"Deadpool & Wolverine" was released in July, six years after "Deadpool 2." "Deadpool" was first released in 2016.

Part of the reason for the six-year gap after "Deadpool 2" was because it "swallows" his "whole life," said Reynolds, who played the title character and was a producer and writer on the show.

"You can't take your hand off the stick all the way through development, through post-production, into marketing and promo," he said.

Reynolds has four kids, whom he shares with Blake Lively.

"I don't ever want to be on a first-name basis with any of them. No, I don't ever want to be absentee, and I don't ever want to miss stuff," he said. "I, like, kind of die inside when I see their face, and they have a competition or sports thing or something, and I missed it."

In August, Lively shared a similar sentiment on balancing work and family.

"When you're working, sometimes you feel guilty for, you know, not being in your personal life in those hours you're at work," Lively told Entertainment Tonight. "And then when you're at work, you feel guilty by being distracted by wishing that you were at your personal life," she said.

In February, the "It Ends With Us" actor said that she and Reynolds agreed "not to work at the same time" when they started dating.

Juggling work and family is "like a circus act with no intermission," well-being experts previously told Business Insider.

Veronica West, a psychologist and the founder of "My Thriving Mind," said that instead of dividing work and personal time into "neat, equal slices," she said that a better way is to think about it as "work-life rhythm."

"The trick is learning how to balance energy, not just time, so you're surviving and enjoying each part of your day," she said.

A representative for Reynolds did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.