Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
Today’s guest is Julia Bösch, Co-Founder of Outfittery, who scaled the company across 10 markets with more than 300 employees. She spent over a decade building the business while navigating fertility decisions, including egg freezing and later becoming a mother using frozen eggs.
🎧 Tune in now on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and share your thoughts! In the meantime: Follow the Gradient and stay tuned!
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Why you should listen
You should listen to this if you are building a company while facing biological constraints that do not match startup timelines.
As the conversation unfolded, the tension between rational planning and deeply personal decisions around fertility, timing, and leadership became impossible to ignore.
What we talk about
00:00 Introduction
02:20 Egg freezing: Julia's decision in her early 30s
07:00 The process: hormone treatments, two cycles, and building Outfittery at the same time
10:24 Sharing the story publicly: why vulnerability was worth it
16:35 Baby and business: not an or, but an and
18:03 What male co-founders underestimate about the female founder experience
25:57 Partner choice as a career decision
28:09 The practical setup: nannies, shared calendars, and regular renegotiation
34:16 How motherhood made Julia a stronger CEO
36:10 Staying sane: coaches, psychologists, EO peer groups, and dancing
44:01 The 80th birthday exercise and WOOP framework for goal setting
Our main take away’s
Egg freezing is a rational optimization under biological constraints, not an emotional decision. Julia treated it as a probabilistic investment to increase future options, knowing it is not insurance but a way to shift odds when building a company delays family planning.
There is no “right timing” for children in a scaling company, only forced decisions. She chose to start a family in her late 30s based on biological limits, not business readiness, because the company never reaches a calm state where the trade-off disappears.
Combining company building and parenthood depends more on structure than ambition. It becomes viable only with a strong support system, including a partner taking primary responsibility, external help, and an executive team that can absorb operational load.
Motherhood changes leadership by forcing energy allocation, not time management. Julia became more focused and empathetic because constraints eliminated overinvestment in low-impact areas and shifted attention toward what actually matters at scale.
The cost of “having both” is constant renegotiation and loss of control. Weekly coordination with a partner, outsourcing personal tasks, and accepting reduced presence in both domains are required trade-offs to sustain performance across company and family.
How to reach out to Julia
Exclusive from Julia
Looking back, what is one thing you wish someone had told you earlier about the biological timeline versus the startup timeline?
That while you can 'pivot' a business at any time, you cannot pivot your biology. While the world is changing fast, nature hasn't updated its timeline to match our modern careers.
What is one misconception people have about egg freezing that you would like to correct?
That it’s purely a “career move” for “over-ambitious” women. The reality is that most women don't freeze their eggs for their career - they do it because they haven't found the right partner yet. It’s not a rejection of family; it’s a strategic backup plan for love.
What role does the partner you choose realistically play in whether a woman can scale a company and have children?
Choosing your partner is the single most important career decision you will ever make.
If a female founder in her early thirties asked you whether she should think about fertility planning now, what would you tell her?
Absolutely. View fertility as part of your preventative health. Check your AMH levels, understand the data, and don't be misled by miracle stories of celebrities having babies at 45. Knowledge is autonomy.
What is one way male co founders or investors can actively support female founders who are navigating pregnancy or early motherhood?
Offer flexibility and financial support for childcare. Don’t judge. Let her figure out her own way.
What surprised you most about how motherhood changed your leadership?
The radical prioritization of energy. I used to manage my time; now I manage my bandwidth. It has given me a 'BS-detector' - I’ve become much more decisive because I no longer have the luxury of over-analyzing the trivial.
What are habits, activities or rituals that keep you sane (while scaling your business)?
Dancing is my way of getting out of my head and into my body - it’s a physical release that no meditation app can match.
Follow the Gradient is a weekly newsletter and podcast by the serial founders Melanie Gabriel & Christian Woese about how to scale a business from Europe while staying sane.
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