Startup Dad

Davis Smith is the Founder and Chairman of Cotopaxi , an outdoor gear brand built around fighting poverty and doing good in the world. Before stepping back as CEO after a decade of leading the company, Davis grew Cotopaxi at 85% CAGR into one of the most purpose-driven brands in the outdoor industry. He left and moved with his wife and four kids to be a mission president for his church in Brazil,...

Matt Pasternack is the co-founder and CEO of Once , a science of reading-based software that teaches children ages three to seven how to read. He built the company after watching his wife teach their daughter to read in just 15 minutes a day during the pandemic, and realizing every parent could do the same. He's also a father of three, with kids ages six, eight, and ten. His parenting journey has...

David Reich is the Founder and CEO of Fambot , an AI-powered assistant built to help parents manage the overwhelming admin work that comes with modern family life. Previously, David was President at UnitedMasters, a Director at Uber, and the founder of Assured Labor, a marketplace for blue collar jobs across Latin America. He’s also a dad of three, married to an executive at Airbnb, and together t...

Richard Petts is a Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of the College of Sciences and Humanities at Ball State University. He’s also the author of Father Involvement and Gender Equality in the United States , a book that explores how fatherhood is viewed today, why dads still aren’t more involved at home, and what it will take to change that. He’s a husband and father of two kids, ages 13 an...

Ben Norment is the Founder and CEO of Stork Exchange , a company helping parents access high quality baby gear at more affordable prices by working with retailers and manufacturers to resell returned products. He started building the company right as he and his wife, Cyndal, were expecting their first child. He’s also a father of three, with kids ages five, four, and seven months. His parenting jo...

Darby Saxbe is a clinical psychologist, professor at USC, and one of the few researchers in the world studying how men’s brains change when they become fathers. She is also the author of Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives , a book that explores the neuroscience, hormones, mental health, relationships, and social shifts that come with becoming a dad. She’s also a...

Walter Velazquez Taboada is a consultant and former operations leader at Winning by Design , where he helps executive teams navigate complex decisions and organizational change. Originally from Cuba, Walter has lived across Spain, Mexico, and China, bringing a global perspective to both work and family life. He’s also a father of two, navigating parenting with an 8-year-old daughter and a seven-mo...

Nate Quigley is the co-founder of Chatbooks , the photo book company that helps families preserve their memories from Instagram photos. He started the company after a wave of nostalgia hit as his oldest child approached leaving home, only to spend years building a product nobody wanted. Then his wife Vanessa stepped in, suggested they simply print Instagram, and became the accidental co-founder wh...

Gabe Larsen is the CRO of Atonom , an AI company building always-on AI agents. He has spent his career leading go-to-market teams at high-growth companies, including Kustomer, Meta, and InsideSales.com. He’s also a father of five boys, ranging from six months to 14 years old, along with his wife Carolyn. In this conversation, Gabe shares why he believes fatherhood doesn’t slow down ambition, it sh...

Jonathan Stull is the President and COO of Handshake , the career platform connecting students and recent grads with employers that recently made a massive pivot into scaling an AI product. He’s spent the last decade helping build the company from a seed stage startup working out of a house in Palo Alto into a massive platform serving millions of students, universities, and employers. He’s also a...

Ashish Kundra is the CEO of Conceptual , a growth agency that helps companies like Cursor, Perplexity, Superhuman, Fenty Beauty, GPTZero, and dozens more. Prior to that, he led growth at DuckDuckGo and founded two other companies. He’s also a husband and the father of a four-year-old son. In this episode, Ashish shares why starting a company when his son was one made sense for his family, how bein...

Robert Whitney is the Co-Founder and CTO of Hapiko , the company that invented Stickerbox , an AI powered product helping kids create and play in more imaginative ways. Before starting Stickerbox, he helped scale New York Times Games, Grailed  and spent time at Anthropic thinking deeply about the future of AI and how it will shape the next generation. He’s also a co-parent to a four-and-a-half-yea...

Caleb Avery is the Founder and CEO of Tilled . He started his first company at 19 and has spent the last seven years building Tilled while raising three kids with his wife, Kelsey. In this episode, Caleb shares what it really looks like to build a startup and a family at the same time. We talk about the trade-offs founders need to be honest about, his regrets around paternity leave with his first...

Sam Yagan is the founder of OKCupid and former CEO of Match Group . He’s also an investor, board member, married to a CEO, and a dad of three kids ages 12 to 18. In this episode, Sam shares how he and his wife think about raising kind, grounded kids while navigating success, wealth, and ambition. We talk about family values, philanthropy, work-life integration, the pressure kids can feel from high...

Rex Gelb is the Founder/CEO of Summit Chase , a paid media agency serving B2B, SaaS, and professional services companies. Before starting Summit Chase, Rex spent more than 11 years at HubSpot, where he became the company’s Head of Paid Media. He’s also a husband and dad to a daughter who recently turned one.  In this episode, Rex shares what it was like for both him and his wife to quit their jobs...

Jesse Randall is the founder and CEO of Sweater , a company making venture investing accessible to anyone with a smartphone. He is also a husband and father of five kids, ranging from 7 to 17 years old.  In this conversation, Jesse shares how he thinks about balancing ambition, marriage, and fatherhood without losing sight of what matters most. He talks about moving his family to Puerto Rico, why...

Mike Rome is the founder of moonwater , a performance marketing studio that helps startups grow, and a longtime operator in growth stage tech where he previously served as a CMO and growth leader. Before starting his own firm, he spent a decade inside venture-backed companies building teams and learning the craft of marketing. Mike and his wife Kate are parents of three boys and built their life a...

Amy Winther is the Head of Product Design for Core Products at Square and the writer behind Motherboard, a Substack sharing honest stories about senior women in big tech. Chris Winther is a former financial planner turned stay-at-home dad and the primary parent for their three kids. They’ve built a family setup that flips the traditional script. Amy’s the full-time working parent and Chris runs th...

Jacob Bank is the Founder and CEO of Relay.app , a profitable, fast-growing startup that helps teams build AI agents to automate their work. Previously, Jacob founded Timeful, which was acquired by Google, where he spent six years before leaving to start Relay when his first daughter was just six months old. He and his wife Sonia, a pediatrician at UCSF, now have three young kids and have intentio...

Amit Shah is the COO of Virta Health , a company on a mission to reverse Type 2 diabetes, and a dad to two young children. As a high-level executive and father, Amit has navigated the challenge of balancing his demanding career with raising a family. In this conversation, he shares his approach to intentional parenting, the value of shared family principles, and how he prioritizes both work and ho...

Lee Robinson is the VP of Developer Education at Cursor , one of the fastest-growing AI developer tools in the world. Before Cursor, he spent five years at Vercel helping define how modern developers learn and build on the web. He’s also a husband and a dad to a young daughter, with a second daughter on the way. When I first invited Lee on the show, he had a five-month-old baby and felt like he wa...

Pranav Piyush is the co-founder and CEO of Paramark , a marketing analytics company, and a dad to two young children. On his entrepreneurial journey, Pranav has faced health challenges, raised kids without a local support network, and balanced family life with the demands of running a startup. In this conversation, he shared his parenting philosophy alongside his founder wisdom. We discussed: The...

Jason Smith is the Co-Founder and CEO of Klue , an AI-powered competitive intelligence platform. He’s a five-time startup founder, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and a father of two daughters. But his most transformative experience wasn’t raising capital or scaling companies. It was stepping away from it all to travel the world with his wife and kids. When his daughters were just 8 an...

Dr. Emilio Galán is a former medical student, entrepreneur, and now a full-time stay-at-home dad. He took a drastic turn in his career, moving from building a successful AI-driven company to focusing on family life after stepping away from the startup world. Dr. Galán shares how he navigated autoimmune health challenges, the difficult decision to leave his medical career behind, and the challenges...

Michael Goodbody is the former Global Head of Marketing & Communications at Robinhood , CMO at Dave, and VP Marketing  at Credit Karma. A year ago, he resigned from his executive job at Robinhood to homeschool his children while traveling to 21 countries in just nine months. Michael, a British expat married to a German partner, shares what it was like stepping away from a demanding executive c...