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 struc…

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 …

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.…

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 ent…

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…

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 ce…

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 Qualtri…

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 manage…

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…

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 fell…

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…

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…

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 T…

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 …

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…

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 ha…

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 tw…

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…

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…

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 Sha…

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 le…

Ryan Bozarth is the co-founder and CEO of Dakota, a business bank powered by crypto. Prior to that he was the CEO of Coinbase Custody, a Product Manager at AirBnB and a GM at Square. In addition to all that he’s also a husband and the father of two kids. We discussed: * Using work as a way to teach your kids about important subjects * Demonstrating…

Welcome to a special episode of Startup Dad! It’s the holiday time again when the list of responsibilities, performances, potlucks and gifts goes through the roof for already busy parents. To help you navigate the chaos I’ve asked many of my past guests to share with me their favorite books from the past year – those they’d gift to another person a…

Martin Glover is an IT professional by day and the founder of cooking Website Dad What Cooks by night. He turned a love of bread baking, barbecuing and being the primary cook in the family into a fantastic Website and recipe guide for Dads everywhere. He’s on a mission to help Dads learn cooking skills and be more involved in the kitchen starting w…

Bianca Schulze is the founder and editor of The Children's Book Review—a resource devoted to children's literature and literacy—and the host of The Growing Readers Podcast. Bianca is also the author of DON'T WAKE THE DRAGON which has been translated into 20 languages and is now a six-book series, as well as 101 BOOKS TO READ BEFORE YOU GROW UP whic…