“Stop Making Kids Your Trophy” | Ashish Kundra (Dad of 1, CEO of Conceptual)

[00:00:00] Ashish Kundra: I don’t evaluate my son’s development as an achievement. I just don’t want him to be a trophy. I’m giving him everything he needs and he’s his own person. And so I don’t try to hang up my personal identity and ego and how he turns out. Of course, I want the best for him and give him everything I can, but he’s his own person. I also don’t want to give him that pressure. That’s kind of unfair.
[00:00:24] Adam Fishman: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep in 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 Ashish Kundra. He’s the CEO of Conceptual, a growth agency that helps companies like Cursor, Perplexity, Superhuman, Fenty Beauty, GPT-0, and dozens more. Prior to that, he led growth at browser and search engine company, DuckDuckGo, and founded two other companies. He’s a husband and the father of a four-year-old son. Today, he joined me to talk about the benefits of being married to a pediatrician, why starting a company when his son was one year old made sense, his approach to not over-parenting, why in his words, small falls prevent big falls, and how and why he tracks his happiness and contentment on a weekly basis. We also covered embracing parenting imperfection and the topics that come up in the scheduled weekly one-on-one he has with his wife.
[00:01:23] Adam Fishman: 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 Ashish Kundra. Welcome Ashish Kundra to Startup Dad. Thank you for joining me today. It’s great to have you here.
[00:01:43] Ashish Kundra: Thanks for having me, Adam. Pleased to be here.
[00:01:45] Adam Fishman: Also, a special shout out to one of my OG Startup Dad guests from my 20th episode, and that’s Gara Vora who introduced the two of us. And I understand that the two of you are distantly related somehow. Is this a thing? Can you tell me that story really quick?
[00:02:03] Ashish Kundra: Yes, yes, yes. It’s amazing. Gara’s amazing. Long story short, our families are from the same region in India, Punjab, and they both moved around the same time to another part of India after partition, almost 80 years ago, 80, 90 years ago. And so our grandparents know each other. Our parents know each other. All of our cousins, our uncles and aunts. We’re all from the same small town in India called. Our parents grew up together, and then Gara and I have known each other because we have the same cousins. My uncle married someone from his family. And so we’ve known each other since we were kids. And then our kids, first kids are the same age. They were born a day apart. And they’ve been like best friends ever since they were born as well. So there’s at least four generations of friendship across the family.
[00:02:48] Ashish Kundra: So it’s been amazing.
[00:02:49] Adam Fishman: That is amazing. That is amazing. Well, and I’m so thankful that he connected the two of us because I’m really excited for this conversation. So let’s get into it. So your wife, Davica, is a pediatrician. And I love to ask the dads who are married to pediatricians this question. And that is, is this a blessing or a curse that your significant other is an expert at all things children health related?
[00:03:15] Ashish Kundra: Yeah. I come down on the expert side of it, heart expert. It’s a benefit rather. It’s amazing. Not only is she like pediatrician, she’s quite a good one, but she’s also like a cool one, if you know what I mean. She knows all the academia and the research, but doesn’t mind using common sense a lot of the time. And I find that’s a really good combination where you kind of know the science and you know what the foundations are, but you’ll be willing to make your independent choices. I think a lot of parenting, as you know, in the early years is very physical. It’s like this kid went to preschool or daycare and got sick. And like, what is this? Is this like a rash? Is this like a burn? Is this a scratch or is it a bacterial infection or is it fungal infection or is it a virus or is it something else?
[00:04:02] Ashish Kundra: And for her to be able to see something like that and go through the triage in her brain and spit out a very cohesive result immediately, like it’s muscle memory is extremely helpful. I’m a big fan of it. Of course, it depends. Your mileage may vary.
[00:04:17] Adam Fishman: Speaking of what you mentioned there, my wife is a very talented pediatrician, but she’s also a cool one. I could not recommend more finding a cool pediatrician when you have kids and you are like anxiety ridden as a parent. So everyone should go sign up to be a patient of your wife’s because it is like such a benefit to have a more of a laid back doctor who has their own opinions and stuff and love that. So we’ve benefited mightily from having cool pediatricians in my household.
[00:04:51] Ashish Kundra: I agree. I mean, a part of it I should say is that she has transitioned over to doing public health and writing. So she’s so cool that she cannot be seen anymore. But if you have her number, I highly recommend texting her as many of our friends and family do.
[00:05:08] Adam Fishman: Well, we will not put that number in this show.
[00:05:11] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, exactly.
[00:05:11] Adam Fishman: But I’m sure your friends and family have availed themselves of it many times. So I get it. One of the kind of benefits that comes from being married to a pediatrician is really like an emphasis on your four and a half year old son’s nutrition and his diet. Tell me what you do around diet that’s been especially helpful or beneficial for him and for the family.
[00:05:32] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this gets back to the physical nature of child wearing in the early years and how a lot of the needs are just around physical things, like especially food. So in the early days, there’s a couple of things I think we do remarkably well. The list is not very long, but this is on the list for sure, which is just like all things around diets. So the first thing we do is, which I really credit to her, is we do not consume a lot of sugar. Natural sugar is very rare. And it’s a little pernicious because there are a lot of things that have sugar and that you don’t think have sugar. Like juice, for instance, extremely sweet. It just has no fiber. It’s just like, we’re not accustomed to digesting just pure sugar in water. Basically this disguise is something healthy.
[00:06:20] Ashish Kundra: And so that’s like one thing we don’t do. The second very basic thing is like we monitor hydration a lot. So a lot of the times this can result in constipation. So a lot of times when kids have tummy aches, like 90% of the time it’s like constipation and constipation is a function of fiber and water. And so that’s like something we’re always monitoring. The third thing related to that is we’ve just found these hacks of foods that are the right balance of fiber and protein and like a little bit of sweetness. So for instance, like one recipe we make all the time are these effectively pancakes that have three ingredients, they have rolled oats, they have eggs and they have some bananas just like blended together. And you actually don’t have to use that much banana. You can actually get away with like half a banana and some rolled oats and just two eggs.
[00:07:08] Ashish Kundra: And so it’s like got a lot of protein and also has like a lot of fiber and it’s like really delicious. So this is one of those things where we have a few staple foods where we know like he’s going to get older nutrition he needs, he’s going to enjoy it. And then obviously the physics of the digestion system are helped along as well. So those are some of the big things. I highly recommend though. I think like diet is just often, there’s a lot of like misinformation out there and people don’t necessarily know what to do. But in general, water, avoid the sugar and try to keep the fiber and take up.
[00:07:37] Adam Fishman: Love that. I may try to make those pancakes this weekend too. I’m all about
[00:07:41] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, I recommend it.
[00:07:42] Adam Fishman: Simple construction of food.
[00:07:45] Ashish Kundra: And the other thing I’ll say is a stomach ache is like, according to her, it’s like most of the time it’s constipation. And so a lot of like we were hanging out with friends recently and they were like, my kid had a stomach ache for like two days and he has a sense of stomach. So we should feed him like white carbs, like white bread and like bananas. They were like loading him up with simple carbs and it got way worse. And the poor guy had to take laxatives and that’s like a situation where like I’ve been stunned or like Remy has a stomach and Dave goes like, “Bri me, just drink some water and have some fruit.” And six hours later he’s like way better just because of that one spot. So yeah.
[00:08:20] Adam Fishman: Your friend’s kids walking around like a balloon just like …
[00:08:24] Ashish Kundra: He had to go to the doctor.
[00:08:26] Adam Fishman: Oh man. I could talk about diet all day, but people might tune off this podcast at some point. So you started your company when your son was about a year old, if I’m doing the math correctly and kind of looking at your LinkedIn. Why was that the right time for you to start a thing? Because I think that’s maybe a little contrary to what popular wisdom would say, which is like when you have a one-year-old kid, don’t go plow out on your own and put up your shingle, but you did. What was the cacophony of stuff that made that like the right time for you?
[00:08:56] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, it’s a really good question. Right is always like relative. It’s kind of, in my view, it was like one of the few opportunities. I don’t know if I would recommend it because having a kid as a young kid is like obviously trying and then running a company, starting a company. The first three years are just like brutal. It’s like you have two children and you look, you definitely have to make sacrifices because they both take a lot of time and whatever time you spend on one by definition, you’re not spending on the other. I started a company before. I’d worked a job. I had great experiences with both of them, to be honest. I really enjoyed my job, but I was just looking for … I was just reflecting on like what I want to do for the rest of my career and I find it very satisfying to build things on your own, to go from zero to one and to like build a culture that you would enjoy working in and to do the things, help companies and the way that you feel like you can help them, which is what we do at my company.
[00:09:47] Ashish Kundra: And it was just values aligned. And I figured I’d rather have my kids see me busy, but like very satisfied than necessarily like coasting and not as satisfied. I think that really matters. And I also felt like doing it later was, in some ways, it would make it harder for me to do it. So I felt like this was like the maximal. This was like almost the window to do it, in my opinion. Of course, I could have gotten a job and probably started a company later, but you just don’t know how life’s going to play out. So I felt like this was the opportunity and do it. I will say it did take a lot of planning. So it’s not like it was made lightheartedly like living in San Francisco, having a kid, like these things are not cheap. And so it took some planning and some like really a lot of thought into it, but it’s doable.
[00:10:31] Ashish Kundra: I would say I’m highly satisfied on multiple fronts, so I’m very happy I did it.
[00:10:34] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Were there a lot of conversations that you and your wife had to have when you were like, “I want to do this and there’s all these considerations.” What was that sort of sequence of conversations like?
[00:10:45] Ashish Kundra: Yeah. Going back to the cool part of the cool pediatrician, which is very cool. So I mean, we’ve been together for 20 years, so she knows me. She knew I was going to start a company and it was clear I thought about it carefully and I knew I wanted to do it and I obviously sought feedback from her on it. And also even just finding the company that’s aligned with your values and your goals, which I feel like I did as well, that was really thoughtfully done. So I think by the time it happened, it was easy thing to do. And also it was somewhat kind of a smooth transition because it’s not like I started day one and just went off to the races. There was some incremental evaluation being done along the way and she was brought on to the journey. And so I think by the time it became a real thing, it was almost like boiling frog in a way.
[00:11:28] Ashish Kundra: It wasn’t like a stiff jump off point.
[00:11:30] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Cool. I wanted to circle back to this thing that you said when you were saying is where you wanted to have your son see you working hard, but kind of enjoying what it was that you do and not just coasting. So when he’s one, you can’t really talk to him about work or like what you do. He could care less. But now that he’s like four and a half, does he ever ask you about work or how do you talk to him about what it is that you do all day long? So
[00:11:56] Ashish Kundra: I actually just moved into an office this last week, my friend and I renting it and we saw the office together. And so he knows I have a place of work. He knows I do something. We’ve tried to talk about it once or twice, but it hasn’t quite clicked yet, but he definitely knows I do something and it takes up a lot of time. And so he’s cognizant of that, mindful of it. But he knows that it helps pay for vacations in his trip to where he wants to go.
[00:12:23] Adam Fishman: That’s a great start. He
[00:12:25] Ashish Kundra: Has absorbed this much and he’s quite happy with me doing work if he knows it’s going to result in him going to Disney World or something like that.
[00:12:31] Adam Fishman: Well, that’s at least a fine initial connection to make. You do work so that you can also enjoy life. So that’s a good thing. One of the approaches that you have to parenting is this idea of not over parenting. Can you help me understand what overparenting looks like to you? Because I think for a lot of people, that’ll be a very wide definition.
[00:12:51] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, for sure. There’s this book called The Courage to be Disliked. Maybe you’ve heard of it or
[00:12:56] Adam Fishman: Had it. Yeah. So it’s basically this general philosophy of how people kind of view the world and this is going somewhere. But basically my general hypothesis, and I think my wife and I agree with this value is like we want Rumi to feel agency in the decisions that he’s making. We want him to feel like we trust him to make decisions. We more importantly, want him to feel like he’s capable of making decisions. And with coaching, of course, and with some guardrails, but he should be in charge of his own destiny. And also as that entrepreneur, I’m like very hesitant and I find it really distasteful to force anyone to do anything. I would go so far as to say it’s like inflicting violence upon a child to force them to do anything intellectually or physically. And I think it robs them of agency. And so coming back to your point of letting kids struggle and also not over-parenting, I just try to give him agency a lot.
[00:13:51] Adam Fishman: For me, over-parenting is when I know it’s cold outside and I know he should wear a jacket on and I will pull out all the stops and bribe him and badger him endlessly to the point where I physically put on his jacket. It doesn’t work for him because his personality would never allow that ever, but I also don’t want to do it philosophically. And so for something like that, I’ll talk to him and be like, “Hey, it’s really cold outside. You should probably wear a jacket.” He’ll be like, “No, I don’t want to wear a jacket. I love this shirt. I want to show it off.” I’m like, “Okay, I’ll ask him two or three times and then he’ll say no.” Say, “Okay, I’m going to carry the jacket with me and we’re going to go outside.” This is not a situation in which he’s actually be harmed by this.
[00:14:31] Adam Fishman: And if he’s cold, he’ll ask to put on a jacket. And sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t, but I would rather leave it to him. If it’s life or death or something extremely dangerous, then of course I’m going to intervene. Bedtimes, in my opinion, are really important to his neurological development, of course. And so we’ll pull out all the stops to make that happen. But if it’s like wearing a shirt or doing something like that, that’s fine. I’ll let him learn from his own decisions that he makes.
[00:14:55] Adam Fishman: Yeah. My son decided almost for multiple years in a row when he was in preschool that he was just going to wear pajamas to school every day. That’s a perfect example of that. At first we were like, “Man, maybe you should put on some pants.” And then over time we’re like, “Why? They’re pants. He’s wearing pants and a shirt. Who cares if they’re flannel?” Doesn’t really matter.
[00:15:15] Ashish Kundra: Exactly. They’re pants.
[00:15:17] Adam Fishman: Yeah. The mistake that I made on the jacket front, because I love that example, it’s such a good one of also just letting kids experience natural consequences and stuff too, like, “Ooh, I didn’t bring a jacket and now I’m cold.” My mistake was sometimes I would then forget to bring the jacket along with me and then we’d get somewhere and I was like, “Oh yeah, it is cold and you didn’t want that jacket, but I don’t have it.” So oops. But
[00:15:41] Ashish Kundra: Honestly, maybe he’ll learn the lesson sooner by doing that. Maybe. I mean, you really do rob kids of a feedback loop, right? And so who knows, if you brought the jacket, maybe he would’ve kept doing this. But since you did it, he learned it faster. You
[00:15:53] Adam Fishman: Never know. So has this ever not worked out so well? Is there ever a point where you’re like, “Ooh, maybe I should have been a little bit more, leaned in a little bit more here, or has it generally been fine?”
[00:16:07] Ashish Kundra: Great question. I mean, there’s always edge cases to all these things, and it’s always hard to ask one way or another because you don’t know what the counterfactual is exactly. I would say generally speaking, it’s been fine. He hasn’t really ever gotten seriously physically injured in a way that I thought was irreversible. I mean, he’s never had to go to the emergency room or anything like that. I would say generally it’s been good, but I hesitate to say that.
[00:16:34] Adam Fishman: I will knock on the appropriate amount of wood for this conversation. Thank you. It’s
[00:16:37] Ashish Kundra: Exactly what I was thinking. Tempting fate here.
[00:16:41] Adam Fishman: Yeah. So you mentioned not doing everything for your kids. And sort of related to that is this belief that you have that it’s okay for kids to struggle physically, emotionally. You told me something in our prep for this show that … It’s sort of a phrase that you said that really stuck with me, and that was small falls prevent big falls. And we’ve talked about this concept a little bit in this show. And I’m just curious, can you tell me a little bit more about that concept of small falls preventing big falls?
[00:17:15] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, for sure. Happy to. I mean, it’s really true. This is related to Anti-Fragility, another book that’s a classic Culpro book, I suppose, where it’s like if you try to remove all volatility and discomfort from someone’s life, then there eventually is going to be a very big shock in the system and they’re not going to be able to handle it. And so this is a great example is baby proofing the house. We just never babyproof the house. We just don’t do it. So there’s sharp edges, there’s coffee tables. If he wants to go grab a butter knife, he’s welcome to do that. In fact, it’s all reachable for him. But we’ve honestly never had a serious fall. I mean, a big fall. He of course falls and trips on things, but he’s never knocked his head on a sharp corner or anything up because he’s very mindful of his environment.
[00:17:59] Ashish Kundra: As a result, he didn’t grow up in a house where everything was blockaded in one room and there was nothing that could do him harm. So I think that’s one big piece. I think the other thing is less on the physical level, but it applies intellectually or emotionally as well. And so for instance, ever since he was a baby, we’ve really talked to him like an adult. So when he was six months old and crying in the back of a car because we were on a road trip, my wife would turn around, face him one-on-one and explain that we’re in between stops and we’re going to be at a stop in about 30 minutes to charge the car and we’re sorry you’re uncomfortable, but we’re going to be there soon. Obviously she checked his diaper and gave milk or whatever, but this is just general, sorry man, this is kind of how it works.
[00:18:41] Ashish Kundra: But I remember a lot of the time when she just explained to him, he would quiet down because he felt like, oh, someone’s actually really addressing me and their tone of voice is thoughtful and they’re … He wasn’t intellectually absorbing what she was saying, but he knew something was being addressed and he would almost oftentimes quiet down. But that’s another thing if we’re talking about struggle. If he’s feeling uncomfortable, that’s totally fine. We can talk to him about it. How are you feeling? How did that make you feel? What do you want to do about it? But we’re not going to try to solve that problem for him. We’re not going to intervene into his life and try to make everything peachy, but we’ll be here to talk about anytime.
[00:19:16] Adam Fishman: Yeah. There’s a couple things there. One is your wife explaining to him like, “Hey, we’re in between stops. This is not great. Nobody’s happy, but this is life. We’ll be moving again soon.” It’s teaching him that sometimes things aren’t great and we’re bummed about that and that’s fine. You’re going to have uncomfortable moments in life. Even six months, he’ll have one when he’s one, he’ll have one when he’s 10, like 20, possibly teaching him a little bit of also self-regulation too, which is like when he’s a 25-year-old, he’ll be much more capable of kind of dealing with some adversity and not melting down maybe when that happens.
[00:19:59] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, that’s the hope.
[00:20:00] Adam Fishman: I love that. Another thing you told me that you do, which I found really interesting is tracking your happiness. So you track your happiness on a scale of one to 10, and this is you, Ashish, tracking your own happiness. So tell me about that. When did you start doing that?
[00:20:15] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, I’ve always really been into meditation and self-reflection. Of course, doing it when you have a kid, it’s hard to find the time. But one trick I’ve found helpful is just journaling. I have Apple’s notes doc. I have a couple of them because they got way too big where I’ll just every day just log how I’m feeling on a scale of one to 10 and then I’ll talk about two or three things I’m grateful for and then two or three things I’m worried about. And just having them down on paper I find is extremely helpful. The most important part is that number, which is like a combination of happiness and satisfaction, probably more happiness, but just I’m aware of the difference between those two. Just writing that down makes you think, “Okay, what could I do to make this better? Is it actually that bad?” Sometimes it actually is just that bad, you feel that shitty.
[00:21:01] Ashish Kundra: But if you’re that shitty, oftentimes it just begs the question of like, “Okay, what is the reason for it?” And just think being able to think about that and think about how it’s fixable is often very helpful.
[00:21:11] Adam Fishman: So did you start this before your son was born or is this something, a practice you picked up more recently?
[00:21:17] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, good question. I think I was doing it before he was born, for sure. I used to do many things before he was born, but this was the one that stuck because it’s like the lightest weight and highest impact of all the options you can do.
[00:21:29] Adam Fishman: And then it sounds like this is something you try to do every day or with some daily frequency?
[00:21:33] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, that’s the goal. I definitely don’t do it. I do it a couple of times a week, but what’s nice is you don’t have to do it that often to see the history. And then you can also scroll down and just see what so much distance and more perspective, like how you were feeling that moment often doesn’t really matter. Most things we worry about, you don’t actually carry on that long and it’s always different. So it gives you some perspective either way.
[00:21:54] Adam Fishman: Have you ever tried in the age of AI to dump it all into ChatGPT or Claude or something and ask it for insights? Haven’t tried it yet?
[00:22:04] Ashish Kundra: I should. Yeah. I think that would be pretty interesting because it actually would be a perfect problem to solve because it’s like fuzzy because there’s not clear patterns, not even formatted in a grid. So I’ll do it in a report back.
[00:22:17] Adam Fishman: Have you, even just independently scrolling through this, learned anything about yourself, like things that cause you to be really happy or content or things that have made you unhappy? What have you learned about yourself in doing this?
[00:22:30] Ashish Kundra: Yeah. I mean, the big thing is sleep, for sure. That is like, if I’m feeling miserable, it’s most likely because I’m not sleeping. If I’m sleeping, then the next thing is exercise. That is another big piece. And then just connection with people. In some ways, my life is so rich though and so many good things going. Thankfully, I have a great family and everyone’s healthy and I have amazing friends. I love what I do for work. And so it usually tends to be the sleep and exercise are the issues. Sometimes life, you just have something shitty going on and it’s unavoidable. And so that does happen too. I’m like a normal human. So if someone in your family’s not doing well or something else going on at work, for those situations, I find you either just need time or you just have to fix the problem.
[00:23:13] Ashish Kundra: If it’s a fixable problem, just fucking fix it. That’s generally my philosophy on it and that helps as well.
[00:23:19] Adam Fishman: Yeah. I guess probably writing this stuff down maybe helps you not dwell on it without moving to action a little bit. That kind of relates to what you just said, which is a good thing. So it’s interesting also that you mentioned sleep and exercise because those things are oftentimes aligned in opposite directions. So if you don’t sleep enough, you’re definitely not going to want to get exercise and you’re much more likely to exercise if you’re well rested and things like that. So I’ve never thought about those two. I try to do both of those things, but never really kept track of them to that extent. So that’s really interesting.
[00:23:54] Ashish Kundra: The other interesting thing about exercise is if you start exercising after a period of time not exercising, it actually reduces your sleep. It negatively impacts your sleep because you’re sore and feels comfortable. But if you do it for more than two weeks, then your sleep improves. These things tend to compound in either direction, to your point.
[00:24:09] Adam Fishman: You have to get through the trough before you come out on the other side, I guess. So you and your wife do a weekly one-on-one to hammer out responsibility for household tasks and business and chores and things like that. Is this something that started after you had a kid or were you doing this beforehand?
[00:24:27] Ashish Kundra: After, for sure. Yeah. I mean, after, because we’ve generally speaking, and I mean, with the exception of the last couple of weeks, been good at date nights. And so we’ll have one or two date nights during the week, but then we found a lot of those date nights were just like logistics like, okay, can you schedule this with a sitter or can you buy these tickets or like, oh, we had to do this insurance thing, renew our insurance. And so just became work. It wasn’t until we divided that, we’re like, okay, we just need time to hammer all this out. And it’s like a Google doc with an agenda and to-do list. It’s not very sexy, but it feels amazing to just hammer things out and get them done. And then it also gives us time to spend time together when it’s time to spend time together.
[00:25:07] Adam Fishman: That’s cool. So you don’t have to spend your enjoyable time talking about household logistics or something like that. You kind of compartmentalize that. Do you do this at a set time every week? Is this a routinized scheduled thing? When’s the time?
[00:25:20] Ashish Kundra: I mean, I think right now it’s on Thursdays, but it kind of fluctuates. We can move it depending on the season if we have work calls on that day in that season.
[00:25:30] Adam Fishman: Yeah. And then you mentioned to me that a lot of this is responsibility for things like chores or who’s on this particular thing. Do you all tend to have your own sort of swim lanes in the household or do you rotate responsibilities around or like whoever can does or something like that? How do you work through that?
[00:25:48] Ashish Kundra: Yes. The answer is yes. It’s not as clearly defined as perhaps … I know Gara and Linda are very clear about this.
[00:25:56] Adam Fishman: Yeah, that’s what I was reminding me of that, that conversation we had.
[00:26:00] Ashish Kundra: I would say our personality is more interpretive or on the fly because things just like our schedules are often changing. So there’s definitely things that we know by default we’re going to divide and conquer on. So for instance, like cooking, anything related to food or cooking is going to be me. I really enjoy cooking. If there are ingredients we need, I’ll put them, make sure we have them in the groceries order and I’ll cook them. But things like that, other other things I would never do. I hate making appointments to see dentists. No one’s ever going to see a dentist in the household if it was my job. So she’s going to do that. Or like vacation booking, she loves booking vacations and I spend hours on the flights and she’ll take care of that. So there’s a lot of kind of dividing and conquering, but it’s more organic in terms of like, at this point we know what the other person’s going to be wanting to do versus not.
[00:26:47] Adam Fishman: Yeah. It’s interesting that you brought up the Gara conversation because I was just thinking about it. It’s not that you all are so vastly different from them. You still have this idea of roles and responsibilities and things like that, but each of you has a very different approach to this and it works for both of your situations. And so I think one thing that I’ve learned across doing this show and having so many of these conversations is that there’s a lot of different ways to make it work for parents and you all happen to be a little bit more fluid. They tend to be a little bit more like hard and fast with sort of dividing the responsibilities up and it works for each of your families.
[00:27:24] Ashish Kundra: And I should also say they would do way more than we do because they have three kids and they’re just generally very productive humans. And so I’m sure the results speak for themselves, but it works for us. This is what works for us for sure.
[00:27:36] Adam Fishman: It probably helps that Gara at one point worked for a company that was all about efficiency and sending in emails and stuff. So it’s just hardwired for that. So what are some of the topics that have come up more recently in one of your one-on-one agendas?
[00:27:50] Ashish Kundra: I mean, a lot of questions around, well, our kid is at this amazing age and our grandparents are healthy, but they’re not getting any younger. So there’s a lot of discussions around how we see our life in relation to them, how often do we get to see them, what do we need to do to see them more often? And so just basically figuring out how do we convince our grandparents to visit more often is a big topic. And so we are honestly considering lots of options. We’re considering getting them an apartment nearby or like, do we build a ADU or do we build an extra bathroom in the house? Whatever else we need to do. So that’s like, I think life design is typically a big topic. And then another big topic is around traveling with kids and like how often do we want to travel and how do we want to do it?
[00:28:33] Ashish Kundra: So summer break is coming up as you know, so we’re figuring out how we want to navigate that. So it tends to be more around like family and community. Those are the big topics right now.
[00:28:43] Adam Fishman: Can we stay on that family topic for a second? Do your parents and your in-laws, do they live in the States or do they live internationally? Where are they based?
[00:28:51] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, my in-laws are in Delhi. They’re in India. Actually, my mother-in-law’s here, which is lovely. She arrived on Friday, so she’s here for a month. She’s great. And then my parents live in Florida. We also love to see them as well. So it’s not like, I wish they were closer, which is of course the problem, but they also have their very active community. So I wouldn’t want them to move full-time, but it’s important. I’m sure as you know as well, it’s such a special relationship to see them with the kids. It’s very unique and very pure and it’s great for everyone. And so it’s definitely something we want to maximize as much as we can.
[00:29:20] Adam Fishman: Yeah, for sure. Especially while they’re still probably relatively young and can travel. And not to mention kids change so much at this time of their life that every time they see him, it’s probably like a drastically different kid than the last time they saw.
[00:29:34] Ashish Kundra: Absolutely. Yep.
[00:29:35] Adam Fishman: As a couple of the topics I wanted to cover. One is you have this philosophy around embracing being imperfect. How did that come about? Why do you have that philosophy?
[00:29:46] Ashish Kundra: I mean, first I’ll say I’m not fully self-actualized on this. This is like a journey.
[00:29:52] Adam Fishman: I appreciate you saying that. Yep. Yep.
[00:29:55] Ashish Kundra: Glad to say that. I just think in general, when I like look at the factions, the parts of my life, like the family and the friends and the fitness and finances or travel or whatever else are fun, these categories. I think it’s very easy to get tempted into everything should be perfect, but that’s impossible. You just can’t control the world to that extent you’re going to be miserable. And so I personally like to think if things are eight out of 10 good and all the things are eight out of 10 good, that is incredible. That is an extremely rare combination situation to be in. And so I think that’s one thing that I try to maintain. And then in general, I think comparing yourself to real or fictitious situations is also a trap that you need to avoid because it’s very easy to imagine how, oh, I wish I had this situation, but just one thing different.
[00:30:50] Ashish Kundra: But that’s not how it works. Especially with people, if you want to get something or if you’d rather be in a different situation, you have to adopt the whole person’s life. It’s like you don’t want that person’s car. It’s like you want their whole life. You want their kids, you want their relationship with their friends, you want their car, you want their body, you want their traumas. Do you want that? Do you really want that fucking car? Maybe you don’t.
[00:31:12] Adam Fishman: Yeah. You kind of get the whole package. You don’t get to pick and choose. On the note of imperfection though, one thing I thought about when I was thinking about your background, your wife’s background, you don’t become a pediatrician by not being a high achiever. It takes a lot to become a doctor and then to go into policy and things like that. You don’t start a company without having a certain drive and ambition. And so when you think about the juxtaposition of maybe you don’t have to be perfect to be a high achiever, but there’s certainly something that drove both you and your wife to be a certain way. Do you find that that is a harder juxtaposition when it comes to parenting where maybe you have to embrace being a little bit more imperfect as a parent or it’s sort of harder to control perfection as a parent?
[00:32:00] Adam Fishman: How do you kind of square that circle with your high achieving drive?
[00:32:07] Ashish Kundra: It’s an interesting question. These things are always very relative. And so it’s hard for me to give a straight answer because I would say my answer would be like I don’t evaluate my son’s development as an achievement. I just don’t want him to be a trophy. I’m giving him everything he needs and he’s his own person. And so I don’t try to hang up my personal identity and ego and like how he turns out. Of course, I want the best for him and give him everything I can, but he’s his own person. I also don’t want to give him that pressure. That’s kind of unfair. I would also say, I think these are kind of like orthogonal in some ways. You can be really intense at work and then be pragmatic in some ways for parenting. The last thing is, I would say it’s kind of like it is what it is.
[00:32:55] Ashish Kundra: This is the way I’m programmed. I don’t think my wife and I were necessarily intentionally trying to be high achieving. We were born from immigrant parents who left India on their education and was started with nothing. There’s massive selection bias here. We started from people who are grinders. Of course, we’re going to be grinders. And honestly, my son’s probably going to be a grinder. It’s just like the way we are physiologically. I think the way we’re parenting is authentic to us. Even if it were hard charging and have these high expectations, that’s just what it is. You know what I mean? We can, around the margins, I think do our best to give him independence and autonomy and try not to overparent, but this is what it is. And again, he’s going to have all the pros and cons of this. It’s going back to the car analogy.
[00:33:43] Ashish Kundra: So I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a good or bad thing, to be honest. I think in general, our kids have probably more opportunity and kind of wherewithal than any other previous generation. So they’re doing all right. But I don’t think it’s as simple. I think this is a part of the package, I would say.
[00:34:01] Adam Fishman: Yeah. No, I love that. And I also love what you said about … I have one other dad on the show and I’m forgetting who said this, but this idea that you said your son is not your trophy. You just do what comes natural to you and you raise him to the best of your abilities and he is his own person. And you’re going to give him the foundation and then he’s going to build on that foundation. And so I really appreciate that you said that on this show because I think more people need to hear that. So thank you. On the topic of imperfection, what is a mistake that you’ve made as a dad?
[00:34:40] Ashish Kundra: Many mistakes. I think it would be like not asking for help sooner, like not being more open to help. Especially in the early days when he was three months and not sleeping much, and we were just kind of doing it on our own. Our grandparents were visiting, but they went back and were like, “Oh yeah, we got this.” No, we did not get it. It was a grind. And so in retrospect, I should have just been like, okay, babysitter, grandparents, come on in for the first six months. And so I think that’s it. I think in general, the first year was pretty hard for parenting. So I probably just would’ve asked for more help. I would’ve hired more help too if needed.
[00:35:15] Adam Fishman: Do you think there was something that caused you to think like, “Oh, I don’t need any help. We can do this on our own.” Was there some sort of external pressure or just this belief that, “Ah, I should probably be able to do this. Other parents can do this.”
[00:35:30] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, I think it was that it was just the naivete of thinking you can do it and therefore you should do it, which is true. You can do it, but there’s a difference between can and should. And just being underslept chronically is not a way to do life. That’s the main thing. And then everyone else would’ve enjoyed it. You would have to make some sacrifices for your life, but it’s totally worth it.
[00:35:52] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Okay. Last question, and I hope this does not cause an argument at home. When you think of your relationship with your wife and when it comes to parenting, what is something that the two of you don’t agree on when it comes to parenting?
[00:36:08] Ashish Kundra: I mean, Davica and I have been together. We’re college sweethearts. So we are celebrating our 20th year anniversary of being together since dating.
[00:36:17] Adam Fishman: Congratulations.
[00:36:18] Ashish Kundra: Thank you. Yeah. So we agree on 99% of things. We’re very values aligned in terms of the decisions we make. Of course, there are always periods of disagreement. I’m trying to think of something. I’ll say running a startup while having the young kid that’s just hard on the schedule. And so there are certainly times where I think she wished the schedule were more lenient and I was more physically and emotionally present. It’s one of those situations where the physics are what they are. It’s not like we disagree on that. It’s just a challenge we have to deal with and how we deal with it is the question. And so maybe that is the gap to actively navigate because it also changes week to week. You might have a really good week and like, “That was great.” But I would say what the solution tends to be is figuring out, okay, what are the non-negotiables in terms of the family activities that we do together?
[00:37:14] Ashish Kundra: Okay, one day, a weekend, we are phones effectively away, we’re outdoors spending time together. So there’s always room to agree upon, but it’s a conversation. It’s an ongoing conversation.
[00:37:25] Adam Fishman: Is this a topic for the weekly one-on-one sometimes? Yes,
[00:37:28] Ashish Kundra: Exactly. This even gets promoted to the other times.
[00:37:35] Adam Fishman: Okay, cool. Well, before we get to lightning round, how can people follow along or be helpful to you? Yeah,
[00:37:43] Ashish Kundra: It’s a great question. I mean, I’m on Twitter. People can always tweet there. I don’t tweet that much, but you can reach out to me there. I can also drop the email, my email and the show notes and people can email me anytime.
[00:37:52] Adam Fishman: Okay, perfect. Well, we will send people your way. So thank you for that. All right. Let’s get to lightning round. Always a fan favorite. The rules are simple. I ask you a question, you say the first thing that comes to mind, and it is a judgment-free zone. So we move on with sometimes some laughs, but very little, if not zero judgment.
[00:38:14] Ashish Kundra: I love it.
[00:38:15] Adam Fishman: What is the most indispensable parenting product you ever purchased?
[00:38:19] Ashish Kundra: We love walking, so it’s got to be the stroller and a
[00:38:21] Adam Fishman: Wagon.
[00:38:22] Ashish Kundra: Very simple. Just love walking around cities. So
[00:38:25] Adam Fishman: It’s
[00:38:25] Ashish Kundra: Been
[00:38:25] Adam Fishman: What is the most useless parenting product you’ve ever purchased?
[00:38:28] Ashish Kundra: Oh, there’s so many. There’s the diaper bins. It turns out they’re just normal fucking trash bins and you can use a normal trash bin to cover it. Baby spoons, you can use a normal spoon.
[00:38:39] Adam Fishman: Yep.
[00:38:40] Ashish Kundra: Baby bathtubs of which we have many. You don’t eat them. Split them in the
[00:38:45] Adam Fishman: Sink,
[00:38:45] Ashish Kundra: Useless. There’s a whole host of things they convince you to buy that you don’t need.
[00:38:49] Adam Fishman: Apparently it’s all baby sized anything you don’t really need other than maybe clothing. Yeah, exactly. That’s
[00:38:54] Ashish Kundra: A legit one.
[00:38:55] Adam Fishman: Okay. What is the weirdest thing that you’ve ever found in your son’s pockets or in the washing machine?
[00:39:01] Ashish Kundra: That’s very funny. Well, my kid is a treasure collector. He loves to collect treasures as he calls it,
[00:39:08] Adam Fishman: Which
[00:39:08] Ashish Kundra: Could be anything from a broken sequin off someone’s dress on the floor of a restaurant to a really interesting rock that he finds on the sidewalk. So there’s no end of little interesting things I find in my pocket because then when we’re on a walk, he’ll stash them in my pockets. So I don’t know, it’s random acorns, that sort of thing. Little shiny trinkets.
[00:39:32] Adam Fishman: These all sound like priceless treasures that need to be kept forever, for all eternity. Which
[00:39:37] Ashish Kundra: I absolutely do. LinkedIn.
[00:39:39] Adam Fishman: Of course you do. Of course you do. True or false, there’s only one correct way to load a dishwasher.
[00:39:45] Ashish Kundra: I didn’t even know this was a topic of debate, to be honest.
[00:39:49] Adam Fishman: Because there is only one way or? That’s
[00:39:51] Ashish Kundra: My answer. No, I didn’t know people had so strong feelings about this. The
[00:39:58] Adam Fishman: Dishes of
[00:39:58] Ashish Kundra: The dishwasher.
[00:39:59] Adam Fishman: You would be amazed at the feelings that people are. Absolutely. Yeah. What is your signature dad’s superpower?
[00:40:07] Ashish Kundra: I can convince my kid to eat many items of food by coming up with some funny story about it. So example is like, I know if he likes a food and he’s not eating it, I just have to come up with a game. So for instance, he likes quesadillas, and the other day he did not want to eat his quesadilla. Then I told him, “Have you ever had a quesadillo?” Because I know you don’t like quesadillas, but have you tried a quesadillo? They’re way better. And I took the quesadilla and I rolled it up in front of him and I put a toothpick through it and I said, “This is a cafarolo. It’s way more delicious.” And he finished it immediately.
[00:40:42] Adam Fishman: That’s awesome. I love that. I’m going to do that with my kids and they’re way older than your son. Recommend. Okay. What’s a crazier time in your house? The morning or the evening?
[00:40:51] Ashish Kundra: Good question. They’re all pretty crazy. I’d say evening because the temptation, the shenanigans, the steaks are higher.
[00:40:59] Adam Fishman: Got to get to bed.
[00:41:01] Ashish Kundra: Yeah. And he’s obviously dehydrated all of a sudden and
[00:41:04] Adam Fishman: Needs
[00:41:05] Ashish Kundra: To eat more. Needs to fish is one last thing, so they tend to be funnier.
[00:41:08] Adam Fishman: Okay. If your son had to describe you in one word, what would it be?
[00:41:12] Ashish Kundra: I think goofy. I joke around with him a lot.
[00:41:14] Adam Fishman: And
[00:41:15] Ashish Kundra: So we tend to make jokes a lot of the time.
[00:41:17] Adam Fishman: Awesome. What is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?
[00:41:22] Ashish Kundra: Oh, definitely the lack of sleep. I’m very sensitive to sleeping. I’ve mentioned it many times, but just like the early days when you get woken up five times a night, that is for years, months on end, brutal. It’s very frustrating.
[00:41:35] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Strangely, it doesn’t often go away. Sometimes kids wake up even when they’re older. What is your go-to dad wardrobe?
[00:41:44] Ashish Kundra: Oh, easy. Jeans and a black t-shirt.
[00:41:46] Adam Fishman: Awesome. Awesome. How many, I don’t know if you started this yet. How many dad jokes do you tell on average each day?
[00:41:54] Ashish Kundra: Oh yeah. I mean, it’s many. It’s many. It’s up there. Above a dozen for sure.
[00:41:58] Adam Fishman: Oh wow. I was going to say high single digits, but you’re in the double digits. Okay.
[00:42:02] Ashish Kundra: Close to a dozen.
[00:42:03] Adam Fishman: Yeah, for sure. Wow. What is the most absurd thing that your son has ever asked you to buy for?
[00:42:10] Ashish Kundra: He’s currently, he’s been asking for a machine that makes anything. Oh. So he wants a machine and you can tell the machine what to make and it’ll make him anything. And he’s like … In the last couple of months he’s been, I think he’s softened on it, but for a time for a good like six to 12 months, he was convinced this was physically possible and was necessary and would ask everyone for it.
[00:42:31] Adam Fishman: Someday that might be possible with the power of AI. So we’ll see. What is the most difficult kids TV show that you’ve had to sit through?
[00:42:40] Ashish Kundra: Oh, that one’s tough. I mean, the dumb ones are just really dumb.
[00:42:44] Adam Fishman: Maybe Cocomelon?
[00:42:45] Ashish Kundra: Yeah,
[00:42:46] Adam Fishman: Like the Cocoa
[00:42:46] Ashish Kundra: Cocomelon. That’s like torture. That’s
[00:42:48] Adam Fishman: Clockwork
[00:42:49] Ashish Kundra: Orange level torture for me.
[00:42:50] Adam Fishman: If there was a fan favorite for worst TV show, that would be the one on this show. Makes sense. Yeah, that’s brutal. Do you have a favorite kids movie?
[00:43:00] Ashish Kundra: Do I have a favorite one? He loves The Sound of Music. Oh. Loves, loves, loves, loves. And he loves all the songs to it and he sings them all the time. So that would certainly be his. And then for me, I enjoy some of the old classics that we grew up on. The Lion King, I like parts of it. It’s really dark in retrospect, so we can’t watch all of it. It’s a little intense. Yeah. Honestly. We watched Mrs. Doubtfire the other day skipping through some parts, but that was a really good one. I have some of the ones that tie back to my younger years.
[00:43:31] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Is there a nostalgic movie that you just can’t wait to force him to watch with you?
[00:43:37] Ashish Kundra: I think I already did it with Mrs. Doubtfire.
[00:43:40] Adam Fishman: It is a great film.
[00:43:41] Ashish Kundra: It held up.
[00:43:42] Adam Fishman: Yeah. How often … Man, maybe you don’t do this yet. How often do you tell him back in my day stories?
[00:43:48] Ashish Kundra: Pretty often, just mostly because I’ve found as a way to distract him if he’s in a mood. For instance, if he doesn’t want to go to sleep or he’s breaking down, then telling him something like, “Oh, did I ever tell you about this one the first time I went to the beach?” And he cannot resist hearing about my life in the early days. And so that tends to cut through the noise.
[00:44:08] Adam Fishman: Oh, that’s very cool. Love that one. All right. You have lived a fairly nomadic lifestyle. You traveled a lot when your son was a toddler. Do you have a favorite dad hack from that experience?
[00:44:23] Ashish Kundra: Yeah. I would say it’s not necessarily a hack, although I have a lot of those. I would say the big one is a lifestyle change, which is you want to embrace the lifestyle, the place that you’re at and not try to bring your life to where you’re going. And so I’ll give you an example. We go to India pretty often. Some of the foods that we eat in India are quite different. We’ll make him his pancakes so he has some connection, but if we go to eat, so it’s going to be different food. And so we try to look at the food and figure out what he would like. One thing he really loves is doll, like lentils,
[00:44:53] Adam Fishman: Like
[00:44:53] Ashish Kundra: Lentils with rice. And we discovered that because we’re in India and we’re at restaurants. What else could eat? Because it’s rice, looks for the doll and he loved it. And then in general, if you want to go enjoy life in India, let him go enjoy the parks there or the playgrounds and go to the restaurants. Don’t try to only go to things that remind you of home because I think you miss out on a lot.
[00:45:15] Adam Fishman: Cool. I love that. Finally, you only have one kid, but what is your take on minivans?
[00:45:22] Ashish Kundra: I mean, I get the appeal. They’re very efficient and effective. I haven’t gotten one yet. So I think the main thing I don’t love is how they drive. They don’t feel as zippy and sporty as some of the SUVs. We have a smaller SUV, so it’s a little zippy, but
[00:45:39] Adam Fishman: Maybe
[00:45:39] Ashish Kundra: One day,
[00:45:40] Adam Fishman: One day. Are you and your wife on the same page when it comes to minivans?
[00:45:45] Ashish Kundra: I think she cares more about the color of the car than the type of car.
[00:45:49] Adam Fishman: Okay. So
[00:45:49] Ashish Kundra: As long as it’s a not boring color, she’ll probably
[00:45:51] Adam Fishman: Be
[00:45:51] Ashish Kundra: Fine with it. I don’t know if she has strong feelings of minivans though.
[00:45:54] Adam Fishman: Okay. Well, see, this is a topic for your next one-on-one.
[00:45:57] Ashish Kundra: Yeah, there we go. Exactly.
[00:45:58] Adam Fishman: All right. Well, now that I’ve given you this Thursday evening’s activity, Ashish, it was amazing having you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining me and best of luck to you and your family and have a fantastic rest of your year.
[00:46:12] Ashish Kundra: Thanks, Adam. Super fun to do this.
[00:46:14] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Thank you for listening to today’s conversation with Ashish Kundra. 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.