Startup Dad

Alex Egeler is a former engineering executive turned parent career coach. He’s also a father of four boys, a husband, and a stay-at-home dad who helps other working parents navigate meaningful careers that support, not strain their families.  In this episode, Alex opens up about the unpredictable reality of parenting, the generational mental health patterns he’s determined to break, and how becomi...

Ben Erez is a former founder and product leader turned solopreneur and instructor. He teaches a popular Maven course for aspiring product managers, hosts the podcast Supra Insider, and is a proud girl dad living in Brooklyn.  In this episode, Ben shares what it’s like raising a daughter while building a portfolio career on his own terms. We discussed: How solo parenting can feel easier: Why Ben fi...

Jamie Lee is the Founder of JME Labs , a consulting business supporting startups and small businesses. Her husband, Jeff Okita , is the VP of Product at Tilt , a leave management platform. Together, they’re raising their 14-month-old daughter while managing demanding careers and a shared vision of parenting. We talked about: Building a strong support system: How Jamie and Jeff rely on an extended...

David Apple is the Founder of Shark Tooth Biotech , a company focused on developing treatments for CMT 1A, a rare genetic disease affecting his oldest son. Previously an executive at Typeform, Notion, and Zingtree, David stepped away from startup life to become his son’s full-time advocate.  He’s also a father of two, a board member of the CMTA, and a first-time children’s book author. We talked a...

Alex Medick is the Director of Marketing at TensorWave , an AI infrastructure company. Prior to this role, he served as the President and Chief Marketing Officer of Inside.com. He’s also a single dad to two kids, a son and a daughter, navigating the challenges of parenting while leading in the startup world.  We discussed: - Balancing parenting with startup demands: How Alex manages being the prim...

Jordan Gal is the CEO of Rosie , an AI answering service for small businesses. He’s also a five-time founder, husband, and dad to three daughters. Born in Israel and raised in an immigrant entrepreneur household, Jordan shares how that upbringing shapes his parenting and how he and his wife work to combine their very different childhood experiences. We discussed: Talking to kids about money: How J...

Sol Kennedyi is the founder of BestInterest which helps co-parents navigate the messiness of that complex relationship. He is a serial founder who has built and sold multiple companies and has been the head of product at Dropcam, a PM at Google and an angel investor in companies like Coinbase, Gitlab and Instacart. In addition to being a serial entrepreneur he’s also a single, half-time dad of two...

Nikunj Kothari is a former investor with Khosla Ventures and a product and growth leader from companies like Opendoor, Shyp, and LinkedIn. He’s now out on his own advising, investing and spending time as a husband and a father of two, including a brand new son! We discussed: * The false dichotomy between ambition and parenting and the support structures needed to achieve it * The work it takes to...

Brian Holt is Staff Product Manager at Neon and has been a VP of Product and product leader at companies like SQLite Cloud, Snowflake, Stripe and Microsoft. He was also an engineer at both Netflix and Reddit where he was one of the earliest employees. He’s a husband and the father of one son and brand new daughter. We discussed: * Preparing for the arrival of your 2nd kid * The importance of being...

Robert Wolfe is the co-founder of Zeck a company designed to make managing board meetings easier for everyone. He’s also founded and sold both Crowdrise (to GoFundMe) and Moosejaw Mountaineering (to Wal-Mart). He’s a husband and the father of 2 sons. We discussed: * The journey from founding Moosejaw to today * Founding multiple companies with a celebrity and your brother * Raising a family while...

Greg Laughlin is the founder of Campwing, a product designed to take the headache out of summer camp planning. Parents use detailed filters to search through every summer camp in their area in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Prior to Campwing, Greg was the co-founder of Statwing, a statistical analysis product he sold to Qualtrics that became their Stats IQ product. He’s also a...

Jeff Fritz is principal program manager at Microsoft where he leads production for one oftheir largest developer events. He’s also active in the developer community as a live-coding Twitch streamer, Youtuber, and podcast host. He’s a lifelong developer who got his start working on the family’s Commodore 64. In addition to his work as program manager and developer he’s a husband and the father of t...

Aaron Francis is the co-founder of Try Hard Studios, a company he started with Steve Tenuto that makes amazing videos for developers and teaches companies how to do it too. He started Try Hard Studios after being laid off from PlanetScale… while on paternity leave with his second set of twins (!). Prior to that he was a data analyst and a developer. He started his career as an an accountant at a B...

Jeremy Howard is a leader in the data science and AI communities. Along with his partner, Dr. Rachel Thomas, he is the co-founder of Fast.ai - a research lab studying how to make deep learning more accessible and widely applicable and the founder of AI R&D lab Answer.ai. He is a professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, a digital fellow at Stanford, founded Fastmail and sold it t...

Mike Yan is the co-founder and CEO of Manychat, a chat automation tool for social platforms with over 250 employees, 1 million customers and growing 2x year over year. With his team, Mike has built the fastest growing platform on Whatsapp and the largest on Instagram. He’s also a husband and a new dad. We discussed: * How he thought he was going to become a magician rather than a founder * Startin...

Eric Colbert, Jay Chandrasekhar and Eli Szasz are the co-founders of VouchVault, a new platform that helps you get trusted recommendations for products and services you need. Eric and Eli have worked together for years at creative agency, Spark6. Jay is a comedian, writer and actor best known for his movies Super Troopers and Beerfest. Collectively they’re the dads of 9 different kids along with b...

Tyler Moore aka TidyDad is a school teacher turned internet sensation and best-selling author. Pushed to the brink of a breakdown after the birth of his second daughter, Tyler went on to tidy up his mind, his life and his household. In the process he built a massive following as Tidy Dad and recently published a USA Today best-selling book called Tidy Up Your Life . He has been featured on Good Mo...

Pouyan Salehi is the co-founder and CEO of Scratchpad—a company trying to take the busy work out of sales. He has founded three other companies, including PersistIQ (acquired by Wishpond) and Stackmob (acquired by PayPal). In addition to being a serial founder and entrepreneur he is also a husband and a Dad to three kids. We discussed: * Coming to America from Iran and restarting his life with his...

Alex Lloyd Hunter is co-founder of The Dad Shift—a group of men, dads and co-parents campaigning for better paternity leave in the UK. He has been a founder, a non-profit leader, and an organizer for the Labour Party. In addition to being an advocate for better paternity leave policies he’s also a husband and the father of a young son. We discussed: * Just how bad paternity leave is in the UK * Wh...

Paul Sullivan is the founder of Company of Dads—a community for Lead Dads which he created to provide more support for Dads who are also the primary caregivers at home. He is also the best-selling author of two books: Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t and The Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of The Super Wealthy. He has been a journalist for over 25 years and wrote th...

Cory 'O’Daniel is the co-founder and CEO of Massdriver, a platform designed to simplify and streamline the management of cloud infrastructure and DevOps processes. Cory had been a software architect and engineer for 20 years leading up to the founding of MassDriver. In addition to being an incredible founder he’s also a husband and the father of two young kids. We discussed: * Conversations he and...

Ben Lauzier is the co-founder and CEO of Nurra – an AI-powered health assistant that helps you navigate your healthcare and gives you a health advocate for your complex needs. Prior to that he was the VP of Product at Thumbtack and a long-time product leader at Lyft, where we first met. In addition to being an incredible founder he’s also a husband and the father of one daughter. We discussed: * L...

Matt Martin is the co-founder and CEO of Clockwise – an amazing product that optimizes your team’s schedules to create more time in everyone’s day. Prior to that he was an engineer and a lawyer. In addition to being an incredible founder he’s also a husband and the father of three kids, including a set of identical twins! We discussed: * Changes in working style required when you become a parent *...

Today I’m releasing the best of Startup Dad from 2024! Across over 50 hours of conversations, hundreds of topics, and approaching 100 Dads (and Moms) I’ve covered a lot. In this episode you’ll hear from dozens of executives and founders like Scott Belsky of Adobe, Immad Akhund from Mercury, Siqi Chen from Runway, Chris Miller from Hubspot, Lane Shackleton from Coda and Adam Nash from Daffy. You’ll...

Chip Leighton is a comic and the creator and host of The Leighton Show, a social media platform with more than 1.5 million followers and 250 million views. His comedy focuses on funny relationship and parenting moments with teenagers and he’s recently published a book based on them called What Time Is Noon? For several decades he was a marketing leader in the corporate world and then left that lif...