My Mom Interviews Famous People; Dad Coaches Baseball | Jonathan Stull (Dad of 4, COO of Handshake)

[00:00:00] Jonathan Stull: Having kids who have agency and have their passions and are flexible and resilient and self-starters and push things forward is even more important today. Being able to cultivate or help your kids find something they’re passionate about and self-starters about and have agency and drive to do it, I think has always been the role of great parenting and all of us probably succeed or fail in different aspects of it, but I think it’s ever more important. It’s just the world’s not going to give you a playbook to follow.
[00:00:27] Adam Fishman: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I’m your host, Adam Fishman. Today, I’m joined by Jonathan Stull, President and COO of Handshake, the career platform that connects students and recent grads with employers, and also recently launched Handshake AI. Jonathan has been with the company for over a decade, helping to build it from a seed stage startup working out of a house in Palo Alto to the rocket ship it is today. He’s also a husband to an Emmy-winning journalist and father to four kids, age 13, 11, nine, and six. In our conversation today, we talked about the logistics and beautiful chaos of managing a household with four kids, all in different activities, how he and his wife rely on their village of nanny, grandparents, and community to make it all work, his direct feedback approach to parenting, and why he believes in building resilience in his children.
[00:01:30] Adam Fishman: The challenge of staying mentally present during his kids’ games when work is demanding his attention, and how AI is going to fundamentally change the career landscape that his kids are about to enter. We also discussed his philosophy around teaching kids agency and self-starting skills, and why he thinks the future belongs to those who can adapt and learn continuously. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Startup Dad on YouTube or Spotify, so you never miss an episode. You’ll find it everywhere you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy today’s conversation with Jonathan Stull. Welcome Jonathan Stull to Startup Dad, Jonathan. My absolute pleasure having you here today. Thanks for joining me.
[00:02:10] Jonathan Stull: Thanks so much. I’m really excited.
[00:02:12] Adam Fishman: All right. Well, let’s dive into it. You, sir, have four kids, and I just wanted to jump right out and ask, did you and your wife always know you wanted to have a big family or was this just like, “Well, here we are now. We’ve got four kids.”
[00:02:25] Jonathan Stull: Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s amazing. I love having four kids. It’s an incredibly rich life in terms of activities and dynamics and noise and love. I had one sister, my wife has one sister. I think we didn’t have an explicit conversation about it before we got married. I think I’d probably default to soon we’d have two kids would be the default. I remember talking about having a third. I’m like, “That sounds great. Three’s great.” Yeah, that’s just one more. And then after three, my wife talked about it. She loves being a mom and loves seeing a family and felt like we needed one more to complete the set. And so it did took a few weeks for me to get really fully mentally aligned, but man, I’m so glad we do. I mean, obviously there’s a lot to do when you have any kids, let alone four.
[00:03:13] Jonathan Stull: But man, I think it’s such a blessing and I feel good right now and also looking ahead to the future and just feeling like you have this really robust family life and know what’s going on and you go home and the amount of craziness and life and funniness and dynamism is so awesome. But yeah, it’s not for the faint of heart, Adam. It’s not for the faint of heart.
[00:03:36] Adam Fishman: Well, I’ve had some five kid households and some six kid households on here, but it’s few and far between, I have to say. So four is also few and far between. So I’m excited to have you here. And your kids are like 13-ish to like five or six. That’s kind of the range.
[00:03:53] Jonathan Stull: Yeah, 13, 11, nine, and six. So for everything from kindergarten to middle school. So we’re in it, man. They’re all doing different activities. We had our first day last week where we had four concurrent games at the same time. So we had three, maybe a little different dynamics across the day, but the exact same time was a bit of a new challenge. But that’s true. Again, that’s been fun to see the younger ones get into certain things and carve their own path, but they’re the full gamut of age for sure.
[00:04:21] Adam Fishman: Well, I have a 13 and 11 year old, so I know at least the upper end of that spectrum looks like, but I’m sure the dynamic’s a little different when there’s two additional kids in the household. I want to ask, your wife is very hardworking. She wife’s a journalist, works super hard. Journalism is a tough profession. She’s won a bunch of Emmys, I understand too. And so I wanted to ask you, what is it like living in the shadow of greatness, of your wife’s greatness?
[00:04:45] Jonathan Stull: Well, here’s an example of that. So I’ve also get is very involved in our local little league and I coach and I’m like commissioner of one of these divisions. I both love it and I’m not sure what. But my daughter, when she was asked what her parents do at school, said, “My mom interviews a bunch of famous people and travels a lot and my dad runs baseball.” So I was like, “Well, I do other things.” She’s like, “You, I didn’t know. You have a job?” I was like, “No.” So I’m very blessed. Emily’s the amazing mom and wife and journalist. She’s carved an incredible career out and so I’m so proud of what she does and catch the circuit on Bloomberg and catch both human if you haven’t seen them already. Incredible. And yeah, I’m definitely in the shadow. It’s all good. When you look my name up, it’s all Emily Chang’s husband.
[00:05:31] Jonathan Stull: You got to be comfortable with that and carve your own identity.
[00:05:34] Adam Fishman: I feel like usually it’s the opposite way. So maybe we’re flipping the script here.This is awesome. Yeah. You mentioned that this last weekend … Well, so you mentioned a couple of things there. One, you’re the commissioner of the baseball league and you coach and things like that. And having a kid in little league, I appreciate how intense that can be. And then the other thing is you just had four kids and four different activities on the weekend. And as far as I know, there’s only two parents. So I’m really curious, how do you run a household of four kids? What kind of support structures do you have? You’re outnumbered two to one. So what do you do?
[00:06:08] Jonathan Stull: I mean, particularly even as they get older, as you know, it’s like the carpool, the logistics, the dynamics, and the parenting, it’s very different. When you’re younger, there’s a lot of human dynamics of changing diapers and putting them to sleep. As they get older, it’s emotions and changes, perceptions, and also a lot of logistics. But we’re really blessed. We have a nanny who’s been with us now for six years, who’s incredible. When we moved, we lived in the East Bay. We were living in San Francisco when we had three kids, which was already nuts in the city. We on the verge of having a fourth moved to the suburbs and still cold enough to get in. We looked for a house that could accommodate and had an ADU in it as well. And so she lives there. She’s also has a family and married and travels.
[00:06:53] Jonathan Stull: And so she’s actually like, she’s not living with us all the time, but we structured it really well. And so she’s gone on the weekend, she has her own thing, but also during the week, she’s helping doing different things around it. On the weekend itself, my parents live in Walnut Creek now. They moved up when we had four kids in a place that’s sort of nearby where we are. My parents are amazing as well, but in this stage of life, my parents are also turning 78 this year. So they’ve been really helpful. And also that starts to have a different dynamic. They’ve been incredibly helpful. I mean, just like whatever we need. And so they watch one of the games. I watch one of the games, my wife watched one of the games. And then one of our sons, we’ve watched a lot of his games, we’re like, sorry, you have a lot of friends on this team getting carpool.
[00:07:36] Jonathan Stull: So we really try to be as present as possible. My oldest son’s got a middle school baseball game tonight and I’ll probably be there for some of it. My wife will be there for some of it or all of it and try to be of whatever we can. One funny anecdote, my wife’s had the pleasure of interviewing some really cool people, including a sit down with Derek Jeter once. And my kids all play baseball, we’re very into baseball. And so she asked him, and he’s like, every single game up through, I think even his first year of the majors, if not longer, at least one of his parents were in every single game. And his opening day, I think the first debut in the major leagues, one wasn’t there because she was at, or he, I can’t remember which parent was at his sister’s softball game.
[00:08:15] Jonathan Stull: And so for Emily, that’s definitely been a big focus of like, how do we make sure we’re there for our kids? You can’t always do it. And particularly with four, you can’t, but make an effort to be there and support them. And also as a kid goes into their singing or their spring choir and stuff. So I mean, there’s all these things add up a lot of logistical challenge on our side too, balancing out work and dynamics of that. But it’s important that’s what you’re here for is to be there for your kids and support them.
[00:08:39] Adam Fishman: Yeah. I mean, one of the things I appreciated when I became a dad of two kids, and as my kids started to get older, was like trading off like, oh, one parent goes in one direction, the other one goes in the other direction. You have to do that in your life. In fact, you have to enroll the grandparents and the nanny and everybody’s going in different directions.
[00:08:58] Jonathan Stull: We’ve been really lucky too. And I mean, we’re sort of intentional about it, but finding a place in a community. And then we rely, there’s a lot of people. I actually got to pick up my son from soccer once and he starts walking home and someone notices and picked him up. He could have walked home, but it was a long walk. And we rely very much other people, families and their own kids, but they maybe recognize or take pity on us with our four kids situation. And we are not shy about asking for … We’re in a lot of carpools. We’re asking for car helps where he can pick up. And there’s a few close families who are just so helpful on that front. And whatever you think of the dynamics of it, I do think it takes a village to raise kids, particularly it takes little raise four kids.
[00:09:39] Adam Fishman: Yeah, yeah. It certainly does. I could say we avail ourselves of the carpool as often as possible as well in this household. So I wanted to go back in time and just ask, what’s the earliest memory that you remember after becoming a dad?
[00:09:54] Jonathan Stull: It’s a great question. I mean, my oldest is 13, so I remember the coming out earth, skin to skin that day walking through, he was born at Ulta Bates Hospital in Berkeley and it was like a sunny September day. And I both remember walking through the halls and the sun was pouring in and looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge and Tam. I think he’s emailed Tam from there too and just being like, wow, it was just a beautiful day and I felt really emotional. And somehow the combination of it all was pretty amazing. It felt like a transformational day. And so I remember that the feel and the light of a hospital and there was also 49ers Packers game on in the background. So there was, as we were doing skin and skin, I’m like, “Oh, it’s going to matters. It was great.” But M&A is so vivid to me still today.
[00:10:41] Adam Fishman: Oh, that’s amazing. Your company, Handshake, spent on an absolute rocket ship of a trajectory. And by the way, quick shout out to Matt Greenberg who connected the two of us. Matt is a OG startup dad guest. One of my first, I think, three or four episodes maybe, back when I was doing this in my bedroom with not any kind of real microphone or anything.
[00:11:02] Jonathan Stull: That’s incredible.
[00:11:03] Adam Fishman: He’s a gem of a human being. So I’m wondering, and you’ve been at this company for, I think, a decade, maybe over a decade, building it. And the company hit an inflection point at some point where you were like, “Hey, we really are onto something now and this thing’s going like gangbusters.” What has that done or how has that changed your ability to be present and attentive as a dad and as a husband? Are you getting pulled into a lot more things as the President and COO than you were maybe when it was a little bit of a slower growth trajectory or something like that?
[00:11:35] Jonathan Stull: It’s been a fascinating journey. I mean, those 10 years, I started enjoying it as a seed stage company in a house in Palo Alto. It was like a direct out of Silicon Valley, the HBO show. I actually thought I was getting pranked when I first drove up because the house looked a lot like that and they were living and working house. I’m like, “This can’t be really the little round driveway and everything else.” And those early days, one of the first things I was raised our series A and I was like talked to 50 firms, maybe got part of me in three, got a term shoe with one. I was up until two or three in the morning, revised the page tech based on what happened that day, up at six to drive down to Palo Alto and do it again. That was intense that I had with three and a one-year-old.
[00:12:14] Jonathan Stull: And so it was both intense, but somehow, I don’t know, your hours are all over the place. I was also younger. I didn’t have gray hair, didn’t have the bags under my eyes. It was felt more doable. I think as the company grew and scaled, we grew really fast, but it was definitely a little, maybe easier to handle. And I think the last year has been both transformational the company and a real challenge. I mean, it would be lying if I’d say that those are real challenges, both to your point, not just being physically there, but being mentally present all the time. There’s things happening, whether I’m at that baseball game on a Wednesday night to see my son, I’m texting, I’m on Slack, I’m prompting my agent to do another rev on that document that we’re building and that analysis. It’s both a blessing and a curse.
[00:12:59] Jonathan Stull: You have all these tools, obviously, and not unique in the saying this, but to build your business wherever you need to be. But it does have impact. I know somebody’s coming up in the morning, I’m at breakfast with my family and things taking over. This year has been, we launched a whole new business, Handshake AI, which helps foundational model labs train and do post-training on their models that leverages amazing expertise of the Handshake Network from PhDs to master’s students to students from BAs of any age and background, and then now well beyond college as well. That’s grown from zero in last March to a $650 million run rate. We’re paying out 30, $40 million a month to people working on our platform. It’s incredible. And we’re doing that while also integrating and scaling all the thing we do on recruiting, all of our 24 million students.
[00:13:46] Jonathan Stull: It both feels like at the most vital place to be right now in terms of the biggest story in the world, I think is AI’s impact on jobs and society and that way they mean not only for the economy and the labor markets, but for individuals, the sense of place and sense of worth and all of our future kids. I can’t imagine something more compelling and vital right now. And it’s also just a hell of a lot of work. And even if not working, it’s like the mental processes running through has been the biggest challenge. I think waking up at three, four in the morning, go to bed really easily because I’m super tired, but I do wake up just with a thousand things running through my head, both business and personal that in slower times has maybe not been the case as much. Even times that we were growing a lot, but it was more, we had a SaaS playbook.
[00:14:29] Jonathan Stull: We were growing 80% a year, but it was like hire more reps. We had product market fit and we were just running through the market. That was much more sustainable and dynamic than I think everywhere in the market today feels like everything’s up for grabs. Every part of the market’s changing. Everybody’s technology is changing. I think we have an incredibly strategic position in that space, but still to execute on that and constantly change your product, your market, your team, your organizational structure, it’s a lot.
[00:14:55] Adam Fishman: Yeah. And I mean, and usually what you just described reminds me a lot of, I worked at a food delivery company or grocery delivery company during COVID, and we went from about a hundred million dollars to about 650 million in one year. You take some time to get to that. So you can kind of grow into it. And in this case, you don’t have time to grow into it. So everything that was working fine yesterday is broken today, and it’s just like you’re just constantly bailing out the boat on that trajectory. So I can appreciate also with your role that the buck stops with you on a lot of this stuff. So I’m sure you’re getting the messages when things break or the operation’s not quite humming away.
[00:15:33] Jonathan Stull: I mean, there’s great people like Matt Greenberg you mentioned, there’s TO who’ve been on start at that before. We built a great team who knows the even data space. So I definitely feel like, but that team, your point has grown tremendously very fast. Integrating that with the core network, making sure that as we’re doing this, we’re doing right by, we call them fellows who work on the platform, students and fellows that work. We’re now running a GigWork platform with 50,000 people training on that. It’s not just the AI element, we’re responsible for payment for trust and safety, their dynamics of that and the intersection of that with our university network of almost 2,000 universities and million employers. All of that is a big vector of a massively beneficial marketplace to have it all together, but also everything we do on one side of the marketplace impacts other sides.
[00:16:16] Jonathan Stull: So while we built the team up and I think it’s been incredible, there’s no dull moment. Everything we’re doing as we’re growing that space impacts everything else we’re doing.
[00:16:25] Adam Fishman: Yeah. If you were talking to somebody who’s maybe you a decade ago, the beginning, you’re raising your seed round and you had young kids then, and maybe the same person is like an up and coming future founder or CEO or president, and they’re also thinking about starting a family, or they also have young kids and they’re like, “What am I getting myself into right now trying to do both of these things at the same time?” What advice would you offer somebody in that position like the Jonathan of a decade ago, what would you say to him?
[00:16:56] Jonathan Stull: Well, particularly if they haven’t had a kid that say you should have kids, you should do it. I mean, obviously you expect I think less at four kids in what we’re doing, but I think it’s the most glorious thing you can do in your life. And it provides so much sense of meaning and output and discovery and joy and curiosity and all the reasons why it’s hard, but it’s like the most meaningful part. In this case, I’ll go back to answer your question a little bit, but I do think there’s an element of when you’re building a startup, there’s sometimes you’re walking through glass or what you’re doing, but it’s because it’s hard, but if you do it because you feel it’s meaningful and has impact, at least for me, the business side of it and growing revenue and all that is massively important because it creates an ecosystem around it.
[00:17:38] Jonathan Stull: That’s what fuels why it attracts talent, why attracts investors, why attracts the opportunity to keep doing this. But for me, the reason I’m a Handshake and why I’ve worked in the startups before is that the mission and the impact of what you’re delivering. So it’s worth walking through glass because doing hard things. And when you do those things, you get a sense of joy and of deep accomplishment versus doing something easy. And I think the same thing about being a parent is like, hey, there’s lots of elements of joy along the way that truly are religious happy and fun and playing games, tickle fights and trips and whiffleball in the backyard and all sorts of things. But the hard parts are, and when you get across through them and you have some challenge your son or daughter is going through or a health issue, otherwise navigating that creates such a sense of accomplishment and joy that’s different than momentary happiness that I think is not rare in the sense that obviously there’s eight billion people and lots of people and parents, but that I think it’s hard until you’ve been a parent to really get that dynamic.
[00:18:33] Jonathan Stull: And at the same time, you can have kids later and later, of course, but there’s a window eventually for everybody and what that looks like. And even if you can’t have kids later, and that’s a great joy with you too, I definitely feel more tired today than I did when I was younger than kids. So at some point starting is a good thing and you can always wait and say, “I’ll just wait until I have kids when I’m later when I’ more accomplished. When I’m done with the startup, I’m done with that. “ I think that’s always a great thing. And suddenly you’ll look up and realize it might be too late or you might be a different phase of your life and otherwise. So my perspective would be if you even have an inkling, do it. And if you have a great partner and something you wanted to do, you should not wait and you’ll always be able to find a way to make it work.
[00:19:16] Jonathan Stull: Life finds a way, give hard tasks to someone who’s busy because they’ll be likely to get it done. I think you find a way and it’s fulfilling because of that.
[00:19:26] Adam Fishman: Yeah. I’ve been starting to think more and more in addition to give a task to somebody who’s busy. If you want something done, give it to a parent and they’ll figure out how to sort it out.
[00:19:36] Jonathan Stull: Completely.
[00:19:37] Adam Fishman: If you think about something that you didn’t know before you became a dad or maybe something you found surprising, what comes to mind something that you thought was one way and is a different way?
[00:19:50] Jonathan Stull: Interesting. Yeah. I’m trying to think, because it’s hard to go back to that time. I don’t remember what I thought 13 years ago. I remember that moment, what was I thinking at the time that it’s different because I’m so far down that journey, right? As you know, 13 years and I think biology even wipes some of those moments out. I don’t remember a lot of the hard times. I’m like, I know they were hard, but I don’t know. Somehow it wipes your memory because you just work way through it. Look, this is not unique. Maybe the first child everyone has this and their four kids, it’s not before. The first kid you’re reasonably focused on, they sniffle and you’re worried they’re dying, they haven’t walked at nine months or whatever exactly. I don’t even have the timeline anymore. You think they’re late and they’re never going to walk and you’re so worried of your milestone and you’re got a million pictures of that first kid and every second kid, a little less focused on when they read, when they walk, a little less, you’ve got like your arm fell off.
[00:20:44] Jonathan Stull: They just patch it up and go to school. Obviously there’s a lot of health things and everything’s gone through things and there’s been real things. And maybe sometimes now I’m a little too blase and realize that, but kids are so resilient and it’s good to give them sometimes a little bit of challenge to overcome. And again, there’s lots of times and there’s healthcares and things you have to work through, but also kids are pretty resilient. They’ve been on this earth a long time. They’ve navigated a lot of things. And so you got to be there for them, but also give them a lot of room and try to make their space. I think particularly those first kids, that’s partly why I think when you talk to other people who are worried about having kids, they may have other friends who have really young kids, maybe their first kid and they see how overwhelming that is.
[00:21:26] Jonathan Stull: And first time parents can be really overwhelmed. They can be very focused on it. And if they can allow themselves, hard to do, super hard to do, to just take a deep breath, to realize that not everything has to be on time and schedule, that not every significant needs to go to the doctor, that their kids can sit there while they work or sit there while they make dinner and those things are okay too. I think then it maybe lowers the bar a little bit on having kids. It doesn’t feel so existential like my life, everything about my life has to be different. Four kids, everything does change a lot, but certainly I think maybe that surprised me maybe not when I had kids, but sort of when my second or third was like, it’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay and you can give it a little more space and not freak out of everything as much.
[00:22:10] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Across four kids, have you developed anything that you might call like a framework or a guardrail for parenting? Certainly give them some space is a good one, but anything else or any sort of principles that you have as a dad that you’d share or family principles, something like that?
[00:22:28] Jonathan Stull: I mean, this is going to be a less bit of a cop out, but say a certain point, one, someone you just got to get through the day and get through it. It’s okay. Meaning people are always like, “How do you get it done?” Well, I have a lot of support, but also just you wake up and you do it and do it again the next day and you just show up. And I think a lot of that is showing up, right? Ideally, you’re also mentally present and everything else, but kid has a game, goes to practice, show up. If you can, it’s so hard son or daughter ask you to do something, “Hey, do you want to go play game with me? Can you read a book? Can you play chats in the backyard?” Try to, do whatever you can to make that happen.
[00:23:04] Jonathan Stull: And there are times I don’t know I can’t, and I try to also not give myself a little more grace around it, but what we’re trying to lean into, and I think everyone knows as you get older, the years go pretty fast, I’m amazed at my 13-year-old, I’m like, “Man, he’s going to be out of the house pretty soon.” And when I was 13, I felt like I had forever time until college was never happening. Now I’m like, “Oh my God, this guy’s out. I’ve only got a few more summers, a few more things, a few more of this, and how do we embrace that? “ And that’s hard with all these balanced things, but I do think right now, we’re about to go on a big spread trip to Japan. And there’s a few months ago we were like, “Maybe we should cancel. It’s too much going on.
[00:23:38] Jonathan Stull: I don’t know if we can make it happen.” And trying to remind ourselves, “You got to embrace adventure. We got to go. “ And that doesn’t have to be a big thing like Japan. It could be anything, but I think you can get really caught up in the business and start up something else. I think the kids say touch grass these days. I think it’s a similar thing as touch grass, hug your kids, get out there. And I would say I’m always perfect about this either, but it’s a good mantra thing to how to embrace adventure, embrace the trip, go out in something, go hiking, go play with football, play game. That time as a family is about connecting and bonding. And that’s what I think really as humans is the unique part of this, is the connections, the bonds we have, the relationships that permeate through life.
[00:24:20] Jonathan Stull: So you better be doing as much as you can on that and investing as you can.
[00:24:25] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Oh, love that. Thank you. See, you had a whole bunch of frameworks there. There was no cop out answer.
[00:24:29] Jonathan Stull: Probably not a two by two or anything, but there’s something.
[00:24:32] Adam Fishman: We can always make something. AI can help us.
[00:24:35] Jonathan Stull: Exactly.
[00:24:36] Adam Fishman: So I wanted to ask you a twist on a question that I ask folks. And you’ve got four kids and you’ve been building this company. Would you say that your kids have taught you something about being a better leader or just a better employee or just being better at work? Is there something that you’ve learned from your kids?
[00:24:55] Jonathan Stull: Maybe it’s learning from kids and learning as a dad, I guess, being comfortable with that. And maybe you vote vice versa, but definitely from kids. I mean, look, I love my kids and mess around and joke with them, but there’s also when you have to be, they’ve done something, you got to be direct with them. I’ve definitely honed my ability to be direct, but loving, I care for you, but this is unacceptable and this needs to change in this way. Luckily my kids are good kids. I’m not constantly, but yeah, it’s everything from, you will pick up your plate when you leave the table. That’s unacceptable, go back and do it to whatever dynamic is. And I think I got better as a leader where sometimes before that I would push your foot around a little bit sometimes and be like, “Hey, have you thought about maybe we could do this?
[00:25:37] Jonathan Stull: “ And actually be like, “Look, this is what we need to do. Need to be direct and I’m going to give you really direct feedback because obviously it’s best done when you have a lot of trust and people know you care and love for them. And as a parent that’s built in hopefully and we’ve been building that up.” But I do think that I got better at that through parenting and through sort of seeing that and how that can also build bonds and doing that and giving feedback. I definitely have also learned a lot that the good part about is now a lot of our customers are 18 to 25. There’s a time period before my kids were getting older that I was losing touch with the younger generations. It was hard to keep up. I feel like doing antibiotical research on TikTok or something else.
[00:26:17] Jonathan Stull: And they’re still a little young, but now I’m like know more than my colleagues about Gen Alpha slang, what’s happening. Now my 25-year-old colleagues, I’m like, “You’re out of touch. I mean, come on, if you don’t know these things.” So that’s been beneficial. The circle has turned again. I’m still definitely out of it. I’m like that Steve Buscemi character, how do you do fellow kids on the meme, but at least I have a little better grounding of what’s happening than I did five years ago when my oldest was eight, wasn’t really meshing that yet and I was too old to be participating in it myself. So that’s helpful.
[00:26:50] Adam Fishman: Oh, I’ve certainly learned a ton cultural references since my daughter became a middle schooler a couple years ago. So it’s a wild world out there. So I want to come back to what you mentioned and your product caters to a lot of 18 to 25 year olds, but I’m going to circle back to that in a second. Before, I wanted to ask you kind of a fun question that I love asking people, which is, especially because you’re talking about feedback and being direct, what’s something that you and your wife don’t agree on when it comes to parenting? Where’s a place where you’re at odds still?
[00:27:21] Jonathan Stull: Usually not at odds because I think I usually … Emily, that’s a great idea. We’re going to do that.
[00:27:26] Adam Fishman: Smart man.
[00:27:27] Jonathan Stull: As you get older and be thinking about how to help your kids who have things they’re interested in or they want to do academically advanced. Obviously, I think all parents are trying to think through and navigate. You want your kids to find their passion kids in something. And of course you’d also be great if they went to the best possible college and they could get into whatever they want. Oh, that’s not that important, but you want your kids to have as many options as possible in front of them. I think how to navigate that and do that sometimes, particularly when it’s like, how much are you doing extra training, extra things on top of that? That wasn’t maybe where I came from as a kid and my experience was more like he just showed up and took SAT and that was what happened. And just as my family, that was sort of the dynamic I was in.
[00:28:08] Jonathan Stull: And Emily went to a fantastic school in Oaklando, which is like a great school and tone and also had a lot of support. And I think she saw the benefit of how supportive that was. And so how, whether you go to school like that or otherwise, that giving students more enrichment, more opportunities to train and test is really beneficial. And I’ve seen that as well. Now, I think it always can depend on how much you’re … Is it forcing your kid to do it or are you giving them the options to expose themselves? My son got really interested in the last year and I worked technology and obviously I’ve learned a lot now and everyone now is a developer given the tools in front of us, but I didn’t come through engineering, but he asked to build his own computer and we helped him research the parts and built it.
[00:28:47] Jonathan Stull: And then he started coding on his own, learning on his own and building that up. And then he joined a robotics team, got really into that. He’s exposing that. My other son got really into zoo-year-old at math, so want to help him test into, see if he could test into a more accelerated math test. And so when our first kid, it was like YOLO, take the test, he didn’t pass it, but now he’s crushing his math test and probably is accelerating to keep doing it. Our other son, my wife is really pushing the way and I was probably resistant upfront, but now I’ve seen it really, he loves it and embracing and doing extra math on the side that gives him enrichment and helps him do that. I think it would’ve been different if our son had been not excited for that or resistant and he happens to be really like, “I love it.
[00:29:24] Jonathan Stull: Great. Let’s go to math.” We’ve found somehow a way to fit it in with every other sports and the schedule we have. But I think that it’s also maybe a function more of like these things exist more than they used to. There’s more ability if you want to do outside math training or one-on-one soccer training or whatever other ways to separate a parent from their pocketbook is there’s lots of ways to augment your children. And a lot of it I embrace, I’m not. I think originally some of those, I was more like, “Oh, we do that, but I’ve seen in an area that my wife’s really pushed on. “
[00:29:58] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Okay, good. I like that. All right. I want to come back to this conversation about technology and kids and the younger generation that you’re kind of catering towards and stuff like that. So your kids are kind of coming of age in a very interesting time. So are mine. And you work at a company that’s very focused on giving newer grads a leg up or helping them leverage their skills and things like that. So how do you think about talking to your kids, certainly the ones that are old enough to understand how to thrive in the AI enabled future that we’re kind of rapidly running towards or already in, in some cases?
[00:30:36] Jonathan Stull: Yeah. Look, I mean, I’ll say what we’re thinking about. I think I wish I had a truly unique lens on it only in that I see what’s happening right now. And maybe we work directly with labs and employers and so I’m seeing some of that transformation. I would say on the market side, employers ask us, I want to hire AI native talent. We say, “Well, what does that mean for you? “ I’m like, “We don’t know. Tell us.” Labs say, “Hey, we want to help people leverage our tools to better get AI native skills.” I’m like, “Well, what do you think of that? “ They’re like, “I don’t know. Can you tell us what employers want? Schools want to figure out how to help. What do they need to be prepared for? I don’t know. A Handshake can you tell us?” So there’s different opinions.
[00:31:10] Jonathan Stull: I’m not saying that everyone’s bereft, but the entire market and society is sort of looking at the same dynamic and saying, “Even those who are closest to it, what are you going to need in the future?” I think what is interesting and I think is probably more true now than before, but it’s always been true is that having kids who have agency and have their passions and are flexible and resilient and self-starters and push things forward is even more important today than it has been. I think it’s always been true. I mean, when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s in college and navigating is there was a lot of people and still today we’re hoping you go to this school, then you get this right internship and then you get this right first job and the second job. And if you do that at McKinsey, that leads to this next thing or you do investment banking or you go to Sang is the best place to be at a college.
[00:32:00] Jonathan Stull: And I think those still exist and many of those will be prominent. There’s great signaling impacts and other dynamics and skill those that you get, but that wasn’t my path. It wasn’t a lot of people’s paths who have actually taken risk and dynamic, but also I think it’s going to be even less of a path going forward or that the ability to be able to navigate and find your own path is going to be really important. You can’t just check the boxes and do what’s … Tell me what’s asked to me and I’ll do it. It’s like, well, you can tell it’s asked of you and do it that might not lead to anywhere successful. There’s no playbook as a fewer playbooks to follow. So I do think anything else, embracing every tool you have. So even my son who’s learning to co-which I think he’s still great and I want him to do that, I have been pushing him like, “Hey, I think you should play around with some of these vibe coding tools.” Even though I know it feels like cheating, it’s actually where a lot of the opportunity is.
[00:32:49] Jonathan Stull: And it doesn’t mean you can’t learn the fundamentals as well. But I think embracing, obviously there’s a challenge on using technology just to zone out and watch YouTube, which my six-year-old loves to do. And that’s always only on weekends, only for the hours. But our 13-year-old now with a computer in his room, we have to monitor what he’s doing beyond that. He’s pretty good about it. But it’s like when I get up at 6:30, I look in there and he’s building his Arduino kit and he’s looking AI and he’s doing all of it, really him being pushing himself. And so I’m really excited to find whether it happens to be coding and AI with anything else. I think it could be English literature, could be science and biology, it could be zoology, but being able to cultivate or help your kids find something they’re passionate about, that it’s self-starters about and have agency and drive to do it.
[00:33:32] Jonathan Stull: I think it’s always been the role of great parenting and all of us probably succeed or fail in different aspects of it, but I think it’s ever more important. It’s just the world’s not going to give you a playbook to follow. You have to adjust a lot of information, be active, try things out, and then follow your passion and create an opportunity for yourself.
[00:33:50] Adam Fishman: Yeah. I love that. I think you’re basically showing your kids that it’s important to have agency and follow the things that they’re passionate about and then giving them the tools to be successful when they do that, or at least to learn and try.
[00:34:03] Jonathan Stull: That’s the goal. You said in 10 seconds better than I took 10 minutes. So that’s why you’re good at what you do.
[00:34:07] Adam Fishman: I’ve been doing this whole podcast interviewing thing for a minute now. So what’s the most creative use of AI that you’ve found as a parent? I don’t know if you play around with it for parenting purposes or tough conversations with the kids or anything like that.
[00:34:20] Jonathan Stull: I do. I wish it were. Well, I mean, I’ve asked it, it was April 1st today and I asked too late last night, give me some April fools, pranks to play. I think I did that last year and it’s helpful. I think I like rose milk in cereal and then give it to the next day. And it was pretty basic, but it was great for five year olds. I’ve definitely, this is not creative. I’ve used it really deeply to plan the itinerary for our Japan trip. And I wouldn’t say I’ve got to the full point of full parenting agents yet that are doing lots of things for me yet. I’ve mostly still use it in deep LLM refinement of dynamics of that. I used it to help me build my little league schedule to make sure it was evan and home and away dynamics.
[00:35:02] Jonathan Stull: And there needed to be some human refinement of that still, to be honest. But I mean, I use it a lot. I wouldn’t say it’s the most creative in this sense for parenting yet, but it’s definitely part of our toolkit for how we’re doing things. And I do need to spend some more time just to try to hook up some more things. If I could create an AI assisted calendaring agents, looks across all of our different kids, sports schedules, school schedules, that would be amazing. Right now it’s quite a mixture of some hookups, imported calendars, some augmenting. There’s always something that’s messed up or looking across all the emails you get from everybody and going into the links they provide and then sussing out information. Of the eight pages my school sent me about my 10-year-old about what’s the two sentences I need, I haven’t yet hooked that up yet, but I should.
[00:35:50] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Well, we’re getting there. I wouldn’t be surprised if those things happen.
[00:35:54] Jonathan Stull: Oh, it’s coming. It’s coming next week. I just haven’t got it myself yet.
[00:35:57] Adam Fishman: I do like that you used it on the baseball scheduling though, which is probably a Jenga puzzle of decision making and that no one’s happy about. So you might as well just abstract it away to AI and let it save you all the time.
[00:36:08] Jonathan Stull: I gave it like eight rules and did it. The problem is it would reasonably, it’s like you can’t follow all these eight rules. There’s eight fucking conflicts back and forth and I’m like, so I’d resolve those, but at least teed them up into like a clear decision matrix.
[00:36:21] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Oh, well, that’s very cool. That’s very cool. It reminds me of the time, probably a year ago I tried, this is pre some of the developments in ChatGPT and I tried to use it to help me plan the roster rotation for my son’s soccer. And it was actually an impossible task to solve because of the number of kids and the time slots, but it kept trying. And then I would be like, “No, that’s wrong.” And it’d be like, “Let me do it again,” and then it’d get it wrong again.
[00:36:44] Jonathan Stull: I did the schedule last year and it did not work. It was full of hallucinations. It was constantly bad. It didn’t surface the actual conflicts. It just tried to resolve them and then didn’t. At least this time it was able to be like, “Here’s the conflicts. These rules conflict on this occasion and I can resolve it. “ So it worked. But yeah, last year it was not. It was not that same level.
[00:37:02] Adam Fishman: But hey, remember, this is the worst it’s ever going to be. So it’s getting better every day.
[00:37:06] Jonathan Stull: Exactly.
[00:37:07] Adam Fishman: All right. Before we get to lightning round, how can people follow along or be helpful to you in your journey?
[00:37:14] Jonathan Stull: On both sides as a dad and my startup, is that what you’re saying?
[00:37:17] Adam Fishman: Who knows? Dealer’s choice on this one.
[00:37:21] Jonathan Stull: I mean, if you like to run a carpool, then I’d love to talk to you any day. If you have a car in the East Bay that you just like driving kids around, then you’re my person. More importantly, look, I mean, I think passionately about what we’re doing and Handshake, what we’re doing. And as I mentioned, for me, it is, particularly the kids getting older and older, it’s this confluence of the problems we’re trying to solve are ones that my kids are already worried about and the parents are worried about. Everyone is the big topic for what should my kid be studying? How do they think about that? What jobs are you going to be there? Are they going to have a job? Are they instead of the beach eating bond bonds all day? What is life? It’s like what is pretty deep conversations. We’re certainly not solving all of them, but I do think Handshake is … We’re really in the middle of all of this.
[00:38:01] Jonathan Stull: We work with 2000 universities and million employers, every major foundational lab, 24 million students today. We’ve opened up Handshake beyond students and we want to work with anybody who is interested in helping solve that problem and help any certain … Earn their way, build skills along the way, navigate whether it’s a full-time job, part-time internship, project-based freelance work. We are really in position two are going after to be the LinkedIn of the internet and AI economy instead of, I think it’s not about who you know and the connections you have, but about the skills, the projects you built, what you can show, not just tell. We’ve built a pretty big business on that, but are always looking pay for amazing people who share that mission and the idea to help solve that. And we partner with people across the landscape. So whether that be at any of those different stakeholders, if you care about helping people navigate the labor market, helping people find jobs, fulfillment in the future, I’d love to talk to you.
[00:38:58] Adam Fishman: All right. Well, we will send as many people as possible your way. And at least we know that there are two high quality dads that work at Handshake. So you and Matt.
[00:39:07] Jonathan Stull: Well, at least there’s Matt. At least there’s Matt.
[00:39:11] Adam Fishman: Awesome. All right. Well, let’s do lightning round real quick. The rules of lightning round are simple. I ask you a question and you just say the first thing that comes to mind. It’s a judgment-free zone.
[00:39:20] Jonathan Stull: Except for all the viewers watching this. So it’s great. Yeah, exactly.
[00:39:24] Adam Fishman: It’s my favorite part of the show if I’m advised.
[00:39:26] Jonathan Stull: No judgment from you, but judges from everyone online. Great. Perfect.
[00:39:29] Adam Fishman: Right, right. Oh, no one judges anyone online. That doesn’t happen. Okay. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you’ve ever purchased?
[00:39:38] Jonathan Stull: Well, she’s on my phone. I know the first thing came to mind. It’s like I’m a parent through my phone all the time. Yes. I missed the wave of all these connected devices for kids. It’s
[00:39:48] Adam Fishman: Probably a good thing.
[00:39:50] Jonathan Stull: I think so. I was like, I just rocked my baby to sleep. I don’t know. Back in the old days, that’s it. I can’t think of more. Yeah.
[00:39:55] Adam Fishman: The snow did not exist when we had kids.
[00:39:58] Jonathan Stull: Exactly. Exactly. It’s
[00:40:00] Adam Fishman: Probably saved me some money.
[00:40:01] Jonathan Stull: I love people renting snooze from people. There’s a secondhand market snooze. I didn’t know what it was. I love it.
[00:40:07] Adam Fishman: What would you say maybe is the most useless parenting product you’ve ever purchased?
[00:40:11] Jonathan Stull: Oh, so many. I mean, God, this is when, particularly the baby stuff, to your point, I don’t even remember their names anymore. There were just so many new baby things. I mean, luckily we didn’t have the snooze, but still we purchased the monitors were very useful, but the ad-ons, the monitors, if they roll one way, they can alert you. I was like, “I couldn’t go to sleep one night.” It’s like you’re getting popups all the time. The noise stopped. I’m like, “Yeah, they fall asleep.” It encouraged just massive amounts of anxiety in parents. So that was definitely one. Oh, go back to another useful one. A white hose machine. I think white those machines. We got them in every one of our rooms now. It helps all of us. I think it’s a great invention, helps kids sleep. I think it’s great.
[00:40:55] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Awesome. What is the strangest thing that you’ve ever found in one of your kids’ pockets or in the washing machine?
[00:41:05] Jonathan Stull: Strangest. Well, in pockets, my daughter recently had a collection of rolly polish that she had put in her pocket. She had this binge of finding rolly polis, naming them.
[00:41:15] Adam Fishman: Oh yeah, got to do that.
[00:41:16] Jonathan Stull: Creating a whole world around them. And then probably seven or eight in her pocket that I jumped back for that she had massacred unintentionally. Unintentionally, but it was just rolly pulleys
[00:41:27] Adam Fishman: Just
[00:41:28] Jonathan Stull: Everywhere, everywhere.
[00:41:30] Adam Fishman: That’s a good one. Maybe a first on this show. I think we’ve had worms and stuff like that. A lot of rocks, but maybe never a rolly pulley. True or false, there’s only one correct way to load the dishwasher.
[00:41:41] Jonathan Stull: Oh, true.
[00:41:42] Adam Fishman: And is it your way?
[00:41:43] Jonathan Stull: It’s my way. It’s my way.
[00:41:45] Adam Fishman: Okay. What would you say is your signature dad’s superpower?
[00:41:50] Jonathan Stull: I should have come on with this. I do limericks. Oh, lovely. And I do almost every birthday or family events. I’ll have a unique limerick for them. My mom sort of starting this path when I was a kid. When we went to school, she had a year off between jobs from time and she would start writing a little notes on our lunchtime napkins, included that she write a little diddies, like a little diddy. They ended a story about … Basically it was like Wednesday and it was like Wednesday and someone nest married wet. I don’t know. It was a whole thing and ended up Mexicali getting married. But it was literary and funny and brilliant things. And so somehow I got on this Limerick thing and that became my signature dad power.
[00:42:34] Adam Fishman: Okay. That’s a first for this show, the Limerick
[00:42:36] Jonathan Stull: Power.
[00:42:37] Adam Fishman: What is a crazier block of time in your house? 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM or 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM?
[00:42:43] Jonathan Stull: 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. I mean, it’s just between all the different now sporting activities/robotics/whatever else. Coming home from work dynamic is just, we still eat dinner a lot together, but it’s not as much as we’d like to and it moves around a lot. 6:00 AM is crazy, but somehow we’ve got … Everyone’s there, everyone’s around. There’s a little more structure to it. And we live two blocks from the elementary and middle school. Someone walks to school so that we don’t … Obviously there’s still times, but we’re not running out to get the car, worried about the drive. That’s a huge unlock. And if you can organize that, particularly you talk about what makes our four kid lifestyle work, like living where all the kids can watch school and sort of fields around you, that is a dramatic-
[00:43:25] Adam Fishman: Pretty amazing.
[00:43:25] Jonathan Stull: … unlock in life. Pretty
[00:43:27] Adam Fishman: Amazing. If your kids had to describe you in one word, what would it be?
[00:43:32] Jonathan Stull: Old. Tired. I don’t know. It’d probably have been … I mean, depends on which one of them. I don’t know. That’s a good question. I’m sure I would love to hear their answers for this. It’d probably be hilarious.
[00:43:43] Adam Fishman: We could go with old and
[00:43:44] Jonathan Stull: Tired.That’s
[00:43:45] Adam Fishman: Fun.
[00:43:45] Jonathan Stull: Yeah, probably that it.
[00:43:47] Adam Fishman: How many dad jokes do you tell on average each day?
[00:43:51] Jonathan Stull: God, I’m more of a dad pranker than a … I don’t have the set joke. My six-year-old, she’s got dad jokes all day. She’s like, “I should learn from her.” But I’m more just messing with them constantly about what’s happening there. My six-year-old finally got onto me though because I was constantly being changing, “Oh, did you hear The Wizard of Oz has a new movie coming out that looking for people in our town? Are you going to go? “ And she’s like, “What?” I don’t know why. She’s like, “Oh my God, really? “ I’m like, “Not really. “ She’s like, “Why are you lying to me? “ And eventually, I don’t know why. I like to gag them and tell stories about stuff, but the older ones know that. They’re like, “Why are you even trying this anymore?” I’m like, “I’m not lying. I’m just thinking to get a reaction.”
[00:44:38] Adam Fishman: Yeah. All right. Flipping this around, what is the most embarrassing thing that you’ve ever done in front of your kids? And I’m guessing maybe the teenager or the older ones might have an opinion on this.
[00:44:49] Jonathan Stull: Oh, I mean, that’s probably been every day just doing something that I think normal. Living, driving carpal and asking too many questions of them and their friends. “What’s your favorite class? What do you do? What’s happening?
[00:45:01] Jonathan Stull: “Oh, one recently, actually, so we ski a lot and we were up in the mountains getting changed in a locker room area and there was another family up there who I knew was from our town, but we have three boys and a little girl and this family has three girls. And so I don’t know a lot of the girl families because unless they’re the same grade I’ve seen them, but even in this case, I thought one of these girls was a different grade because I’d never heard my … You go to the same school. So I was like, “ Well, what grade are you in? “She goes,” I’m in fifth grade. “And I was like, “ You’re in fifth grade? Really? “I lived in fifth grade. And she’s like, “ Yeah, we’ve actually been in the same class three years. “I was like, “ What?
[00:45:37] Jonathan Stull: “And I’m turning to him. I’m like, “ You’ve never told me about this. How you has never said a word to each other. You’ve been in the same locker room three months in a row. You never said one word. “And my nine-year-old girl is, “ Awkward. “And my learner was just hiding in space and the girl’s like, “ What are you doing? “I couldn’t believe that these people never said a word to each other. They acted like they did not only the same school, but they’ve been in the same class for three years. Oh, that’s funny. And so I didn’t realize that and came and completely embarrassed them, embarrassed this other little girl. And I don’t know, it felt pretty normal to me. So all right.
[00:46:08] Adam Fishman: Seems like a normal human interaction to have with somebody.
[00:46:12] Jonathan Stull: What? Have you not said anything or told me about this at all?
[00:46:15] Adam Fishman: All right. Yeah. Okay. What is the most difficult kids TV show that you’ve ever had to sit through?
[00:46:23] Jonathan Stull: Oh, man. Most of my, I think Bluey’s pretty good. It’s all right. Some other ones. This one, what was it? Well, right now, I’d say it’s less kids TV shows then. I walk downstairs on the weekends when they’re allowed to watch YouTube or otherwise, and just the YouTube feed of crap.
[00:46:38] Adam Fishman: Yes.
[00:46:39] Jonathan Stull: It’s not even like it’s like too adult for them. It’s the shorts. It’s idiotic. And you know this, the trend of one side has something, a complete non-second of the video next to a video of someone explaining something. I’m getting dumber every second I watch this. I have to turn those off. I’d rather have a watch a movie. I’d rather have watch Bluey. I’d rather watch Coco Mellon. That’s what it was called. Cocoa Mellon is tough. Cocoa
[00:47:04] Adam Fishman: Mellon’s
[00:47:05] Jonathan Stull: Tough, but I’d rather not watch Coco Mellon any day than YouTube shorts.
[00:47:09] Adam Fishman: Okay. All right. And by the way, Coco Mellon takes the all time prize for the worst kids TV show on this show.
[00:47:15] Jonathan Stull: There
[00:47:15] Adam Fishman: We go.
[00:47:16] Jonathan Stull: There we go.
[00:47:16] Adam Fishman: What is your favorite kid’s movie?
[00:47:19] Jonathan Stull: Good question. I mean, obviously what depends on what a kid’s movie definition is. I love old Disney movies. I mean like Lion Kings, great one. Any of the Disney Canon is fantastic. I don’t know. There’s not many. It’s funny to get older, it’s all trying to find movies at 15 to six and 13 year old, which doesn’t really … But starting to get into some ages where they can watch seventh grader really want to watch Billy Madison with Nixon. I told them it was like, I thought it was my seventh grade and myself thought it was hilarious.
[00:47:45] Adam Fishman: Yes.
[00:47:46] Jonathan Stull: But best kids movie, I’d probably go … I’d go like a Lion King, say that.
[00:47:50] Adam Fishman: Okay, cool. And then related to Billy Madison, do you have a favorite nostalgic movie that you can’t wait to force your kids to watch with you when they’re old enough?
[00:48:00] Jonathan Stull: We just talked about this before. I’m not sure they’re all ready for it, but my teenager, Braveheart and Glory were at the same time, just amazing movies and soundtracks. I mean, it’s separately very different than Adam Sandler runs. And if they get a little older, we definitely were looking at the Will Ferrell age group movie from Anchorman, old school Wedding Crashers would be another one that, not kids, but certainly I’m excited to phase where they’re old enough where I can watch that with them and enjoy it with them and not feel like I’m rotting their brains too much.
[00:48:31] Adam Fishman: Okay. I’ve just got a couple more for you.
[00:48:33] Jonathan Stull: Yeah.
[00:48:33] Adam Fishman: What is the worst experience you’ve ever had assembling a kid’s toy or a piece of furniture?
[00:48:39] Jonathan Stull: I mean, the cribs originally were just … I mean, particularly what I loved is when you would have to change the height of the pad, but as they got older or younger, they go from being higher to lower. And it supposedly really, really easy. It basically felt like you had to redo the entire crib again and put it back together again. It was also just like, “Hey, honey, can you just lower the crib in two minutes?” I’m like, “Cool. It’ll be eight hours.” But yeah, no, it’s great. I was hoping to do that all Saturday. It’s fantastic. It shouldn’t have been that hard. It wasn’t. It just was never designed to be easy, at least the ones that I had. I think our cribs are also going to be fair, more form over function sometimes. So they looked really good and they made the room look great, but they probably weren’t the most easy use.
[00:49:21] Adam Fishman: Okay, good. Lowering the crib, Matt. Okay, two more. How often do you tell your kids back in my day stories?
[00:49:28] Jonathan Stull: All the time. I mean, daily, hourly? I mean, yeah, from … I mean, God, it was just like back in my day, our school lunch was even worse than yours. They’re complaining to school lunch. I remember going into Tuesday and it was called just Chicken On Bund. And you’re like, “That was Tuesday. I love Chicken on Bun.” A little chicken on Bun with a little milk on the side. It was fantastic. In the back of my day we-
[00:49:49] Adam Fishman: You think it was chicken. You never
[00:49:50] Jonathan Stull: Know. Exactly. You never know. Oh yeah. I mean, just day hourly, all the time.
[00:49:54] Adam Fishman: Okay. All right. And finally, I’m very curious about this because you have four kids. What is your take on minivans?
[00:50:02] Jonathan Stull: Oh, I had a minivan for nine years. I loved the minivan. But also on Sunday, literally three days ago, we went from the minivan to a suburban,
[00:50:12] Jonathan Stull: Which is an obscene. I’m like, never would’ve imagined we’re doing that. Gas guzzling, just hucking massive tank that I both feel guilty about, but also we ran one on spring break last year. We got the whole fan of the car and everything else. It was a whole nother level. Now minivan, nine years, I went even from a two-wheel drive. I got an all- wheel drive minivan to go to the mountains. Wow. I’m one of the biggest minivan fans. And I just feel like I’ve betrayed myself by getting the suburban, but literally I wouldn’t go back. So I’d say minivan was the right call, way easier for a lot of that time. Our kids are getting older, bigger, more things. The minivan just, we grew out of it. But otherwise, when we had our third chance, I went minivan. I never went back. We did nine years.
[00:50:54] Jonathan Stull: Christ the Pacifica all the way. You got to do it. I’m a big minivan guy.
[00:50:58] Adam Fishman: Is your wife also on team minivan or is she a little bit
[00:51:01] Jonathan Stull: More of this? She was. She was. She definitely literally, once we got the new car, she’s like, “When can you move the minivan out in front of our house? I want it gone. Sell it as soon as possible. I don’t want to see it. “ So she was on it for one time, but once we, I think, mentally had moved beyond it, she wants it gone, which is reasonable. But I feel very conflicted because I’m a huge team minivan, but now I’ve betrayed my team.
[00:51:28] Adam Fishman: Okay. All right. Well, I think that’s a lovely way to end. Here’s the team minivan.
[00:51:33] Jonathan Stull: Are you team minivan?
[00:51:35] Adam Fishman: I don’t have the number of kids that require a minivan, so I am not, unfortunately, team minivan, but I do like them on trips and things like that. Nothing wrong with a minivan. All right. Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me today on Startup Dad and it was a pleasure having you and I wish you and Handshake and your family all the best for a successful year. So thank you.
[00:51:58] Jonathan Stull: Thank you so much, Adam. I had a great time and cheers to all the startup dads out there.
[00:52:01] Adam Fishman: Awesome. Thank you for listening to today’s conversation with Jonathan Stull. You can subscribe and watch the show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Visit www.startupdadpod.com to learn more and browse past episodes. Thanks for listening and see you next week.