The founder’s balancing act - Managing projects without losing your mind
One of the hardest parts of founding a software company is realising that you cannot, and should not do everything yourself. Yet most founders try. We become salesperson, project manager, chief troubleshooter, HR, sometimes even bookkeeper. At first, it feels heroic. Then it becomes exhausting. In my early days, I prided myself on spinning multiple plates at once. Running client projects by day, wrangling coders at night, attending industry events on weekends, all while trying to raise a family and build a product from scratch. I wore “Cyclone Sonja” as a nickname with pride because yes, I did storm through problems at pace. But even cyclones lose energy eventually. The truth is: you can’t do it all. Nor should you.
The founder’s balancing act - Managing projects without losing your mind
Knowing your strengths
I was good at vision, strategy, relationship building, and making quick calls under pressure. I wasn’t great at bookkeeping or keeping up with endless admin. Yet, for far too long, I clung to those tasks as though I had something to prove. They drained time and focus I should have been putting into the bigger picture.
Eventually, I learned the art of letting go. Travel bookings went to Corporate Traveller. Accounts moved from my kitchen table (where my mum and later my husband and I traded off) to outsourced Xero professionals. HR documentation went to a specialist who brought structure to what had been casual, handshake based agreements.
Each step of letting go felt like a small loss of control—but in reality, it was a gain in capacity.
The juggle is real
Managing projects while building a company often feels like juggling knives while riding a unicycle. At one point, I was working as a consultant to fund the company, running ThoughtWare by night, and still handling all the unexpected fires. That meant extra hours at weekends and late nights, multitasking at its worst.
But here’s the thing: sometimes that’s unavoidable in the startup phase. Founders do need to juggle, to wear hats that don’t quite fit, to pick up the slack when money is thin. The trick is to know which hats you should eventually hand off, and to do it before you burn out.
Building systems to save sanity
What saved me wasn’t just delegation, it was systems. Project management is unforgiving when you try to keep everything in your head. So I borrowed from methodologies I knew PMBOK, PRINCE2 and built a hybrid system that worked for our small but nimble team. Over time, my staff improved those tools, adding templates, checklists, and repeatable processes.
Good systems don’t replace people, but they do stop chaos from taking over. They also make onboarding new staff possible without you personally having to transfer every ounce of knowledge.
When not to be the hero
I once thought saying “I’ll handle it” made me indispensable. The reality? It made me a bottleneck. Clients didn’t always get faster outcomes, staff didn’t grow, and I was too stretched to think strategically.
The turning point came when I realised that being the hero was actually risking the company. What if I got sick? What if I simply couldn’t keep up? That’s when I learned the founder’s real job isn’t to do everything, it’s to build the environment where the right things get done.
My advice
- Be honest about your weaknesses - You don’t need to be good at everything.
- Delegate before you break - Outsource what drains you.
- Build systems, not silos - They’ll save you when the unexpected hits.
- Measure your time - If something consistently drains hours and doesn’t grow the business, hand it off.
Founders burn out not because they lack drive, but because they refuse to let go. The balancing act isn’t about keeping every plate in the air yourself, it’s about knowing which plates you should hand to others.
That’s not weakness. That’s wisdom.
About the author - Sonja Bernhardt OAM is a multi-award winning technologist, speaker, CEO of Thoughtware Australia, and author of "Girls Do IT Too!"