This Founder Started A Company To Save His Son's Life | David Apple (Dad of 2, Shark Tooth Biotech)

David Apple (00:00):
You don't pursue happiness. Happiness ensues from the activities that you do. And I think passion is the same way where you don't start with from a standstill to a passion, but rather your passion develops through pursuing your own curiosity and your interests and stuff like that.

Adam Fishman (00:18):
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. Having your kid diagnosed with a rare childhood disease is a terrifying prospect, but something that far too many parents have to navigate. Today I'm joined by David Apple to talk about this journey for his family. He's the Founder of Shark Tooth Biotech, which is on a quest to develop treatments for CMT 1A, a rare genetic disease affecting his oldest son and approximately 1.6 million other people worldwide. He has been an executive at Typeform, Notion, and Zingtree before leaving to be a full-time advocate for his son's care. He's a husband and the father of two kids. On today's episode, we talked about his son's illness, the journey to diagnosis and how this has changed his approach to parenting. He shared a positive message for parents who are navigating rare diseases, some incredibly useful frameworks for parenting and marriage, and a couple of hot takes including don't follow your passions. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast player so you never miss a weekly episode. Welcome David Apple to Startup Dad. David, it is my absolute pleasure to have you here today. Super excited.

David Apple (01:38):
Thanks for having me, Adam. I'm a big fan and I'm grateful to be here.

Adam Fishman (01:41):
Good. Well, I think we have a relatively serious episode in front of us given your background and what you do and your family history and everything. But before we get started, I wanted to get one thing out of the way, which is you mentioned a story that your mother-in-law walked in on you standing on your tippy toes while peeing in the kitchen sink. That is possibly the most dad story of all time, but also I need to know the details of this story. Before we get into the heavy stuff, tell me about your mother-in-law walking in on you, peeing in the kitchen sink.

David Apple (02:20):
Funny or embarrassing story. So yeah, that's the one that came to mind. I now maybe wish I thought of something else, but it was COD. My mother-in-law was staying with us because we had a newborn son, Ari, which we'll talk about. And we lived in a small two bedroom, one bathroom in rush to in San Francisco. And I just woke up, lack of sleep, really need to use the bathroom. The bathroom was taken. I did what maybe most people would do, I'm not sure, but I just went for the sink. So then walked in and there was a bit of an awkward like, oh, for both of us. It was like, oh, and then she realized was going on, which probably she'd never seen in her life before either. That was memorable.

Adam Fishman (03:05):
Wow. Memorable is certainly one way to put it. Did it make breakfast a little awkward the next day or?

David Apple (03:11):
That was the morning. So yeah, we had the whole day to enjoy that. Sorry.

Adam Fishman (03:17):
Clearly you've survived. You're still married I think to the same person. So clearly the mother-in-law was maybe not okay with it, but tolerated it.

David Apple (03:27):
She thought the story was just as funny as I did, so yeah.

Adam Fishman (03:31):
This is a story you will tell your kids or maybe have already told your oldest someday, but that's a real keeper. Okay, so you David, were an executive at Typeform, which is a product I've used Notion, also a product that I have used and I'm a huge fan of this whole podcast runs on Notion. And then you were CRO, chief revenue officer for an AI company, and then in 2021 that all changed and you left the AI company. Tell me what happened.

David Apple (03:58):
Well, the main driver is I knew something was going on with my son and I didn't know what, my wife and I went to a lot of appointments. Basically our concern would grow, then we would go to an appointment and they would shoo us off and say, you're a first time parent, you worry too much. You probably picked him up too much. It's a delay, it's not a disability, just go home and stop worrying. And then our concern would go down and then we'd go to the playground and our concern would go back up. And basically it got to the point where we stopped taking what the doctor said as you should stop worrying. And we decided to worry. And in parallel, this is before ChatGPT, you Google all these terrifying stories of families who get a diagnosis a few months too late and then the treatment doesn't have the same impact as if they had had the diagnosis a little earlier.

David Apple (04:46):
So it was clear that as a CRO of a startup and my wife's partner at WC Fund, we couldn't be as president and doctor's appointments are never on weekends or evenings. They're always in the middle of the week. No, they are not. To get an appointment, you probably have to spend two hours on the phone just to get the appointment in the first place. So anyways, we realized we couldn't advocate for him the way we wanted and so something had to give my wife's career was on this upward trajectory. I had already had some successes, as you kindly mentioned, she had made a sacrifice for me early, several years prior. I thought it would be nicer for me to make that sacrifice this time. And also it's something I really felt it was really important for me to do.

Adam Fishman (05:27):
So you became a stay at home dad temporarily to basically sort out the care for your son and what was your son diagnosed with? What did you learn about his illness?

David Apple (05:39):
Eventually he was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A or CMT 1A for short, which is a peripheral nerve disease. It causes weakness, loss of sensation, loss of balance, it cause a lot of delays in developmental milestones, physical delays, and unfortunately it's treatment or it's a disease that has no treatment or cure and that's progressive. So that's what he was diagnosed with. Eventually the diagnostic journey was very long and difficult journey for us.

Adam Fishman (06:13):
And when you left your job to become his primary and number one advocate, did you have the diagnosis at that time? Are you still trying to sort out what was going on?

David Apple (06:24):
No, we were trying to sort out what was going on and we incorrectly thought that his birth was quite traumatic. Initially we thought it was something that happened during birth, a vacuum malfunction. He had a bruise on his head and we thought UCSF was counter incentivized to kind of dig into it, get to the bottom of it because that's where he was born. So we went through all the specialists at UCSF and then we switched and again, went through all the specialists at Stanford, which from the city is an extra hour drive to back at each way and we saw the specialist there. That's how we eventually got the diagnosis.

Adam Fishman (06:57):
Did you have to do genetic testing at some point to figure out what was going on? Yeah. That's interesting.

David Apple (07:03):
Only like 20% of parents end up discovering what the cause of the delay is. Is that really where you want to spend your time and energy? And for me and my wife, it was clearly, yes, that is where we want to spend our time and energy and I'm glad we did the physical therapist, which by the way, we had to pay out of pocket for because we didn't have a diagnosis yet. She said, well, have you done a genetic test? And so I went to Stanford and said, Hey, I'd like to have a genetic test. They referred us to the right person and they said he doesn't have a genetic disease. It would present differently and not only that, if you do the tests, you'll probably learn something that you don't want to learn like predisposition to Alzheimer's or that type of thing, so we don't recommend it and you'll have to pay out of pocket if you want to do it.

Adam Fishman (07:43):
They basically said, Hey, you're probably not going to learn much from this or you're going to learn something that you don't really want to learn, but it's not going to be related to this thing that's happening to him right now. And you said, well, we're going to do this anyways. And then you learned from the results of that test that he had.

David Apple (08:02):
CMT 1A and it was almost the last resort test because his balance was off. He was missing developmental milestones and I went to an ear, nose throat doctor to see if something was off. I went to an eye doctor because maybe something was off with his vision. I had already kind of exhausted a lot of different paths and as someone who was not in bio background whatsoever, genetic was not my first intuition to go to where now it seems so obvious.

Adam Fishman (08:32):
Do you remember when you got the diagnosis back? Do you remember what you were feeling in that moment when that happened?

David Apple (08:41):
Yeah, the main feeling was devastation. My son has a rare disease that has no treatment or cure and that's progressive. It's kind of what every parent dreads to hear. There was a little bit of relief because it doesn't affect his cognitive skills, which were fortunate and I thought he had cerebral palsy, which does affect cognitive skills and there was a big also feeling of validation. We had so many experts had told us stop worrying so much. The diagnosis came with an apology of saying, we're sorry that we had misled. You were right. There is something going on. So there was some validation, but the main feeling was feeling devastated for my son and for what I had visualized as his life and my life as his dad with him.

Adam Fishman (09:33):
I wanted to go back to pre-diagnosis when you decided, hey, I need to step back from my job because my son needs a full-time advocate and that's going to be me. What was that conversation like with your wife Christina and sort of how did the two of you come to the conclusion that it should be you to step back from day-to-day work?

David Apple (09:55):
I would say it was one conversation. It's an evolution, right? It was the conviction that something was going on that grew and grew and grew to the point where we refused to not just ignore it, but we refused to beat inactive around it. And her career was on a very upward trajectory and I was very excited for her and I had had some successes and I was happy to take a step back and she had made some sacrifices for me previously. We agreed that it would make sense for me to step back and kind of champion this and allow her to pursue her successful career. We knew something needed to change. That was the forcing function to make something happen.

Adam Fishman (10:38):
I did want to ask, one of the things you mentioned to me in the prep for this show is that there was a point in your life, I think before all of this happened, where you thought maybe someday I'll be a stay at home dad. And obviously this is not what you would envisioned stay at home dad life would look like. But even before this experience, and you're obviously back working now and we'll get to that in a little bit, but even before this experience, you changed your perspective on being a stay-at-home dad. And I'm curious what you learned about yourself in trialing that I think, right, maybe when Ari was born in the very beginning before you knew that he had this illness.

David Apple (11:20):
I think it's a combination of things. The first one is how incredibly incorrect my visualization of what it would be like to be a stay-at-home dad was any dad who's taking care of their kid for even just two full consecutive days knows that it's not relaxing, it's intense. You don't actually have time to do anything else. And then the other part is it's not like college where you're not working, but all your friends are also not working. Everybody around you is doing something that's stimulating in different ways. I knew very quickly that I missed that. And there was also something else that I thought was an interesting learning. I listened to a podcast about happiness and they were explaining that there's an optimal window of idle time or free time per day and it's not unlimited. It's rather if you have less than two hours a day you can get burnout, which I've also experienced. And if you have more than five hours a day of free time, then you kind of twiddle your thumbs. So I realized that I, not only do I not want to be a full-time stay-at-home dad, I probably never want to fully retire. I want to find something that keeps me stimulated.

Adam Fishman (12:33):
That's really interesting about that two to five hour window, and I can appreciate that there's challenges at both ends of that spectrum. Thanks for sharing that. I'm going to have to look up that study. You're not a stay-at-home dad now, but I think is a really valuable experience for you to go through and certainly taking care of Ari and helping drive his diagnosis and being his advocate was a super important role to play. I'm curious what day-to-day care looks like for him now he's a four and a half year old kid. He's got boundless energy, probably like most four and a half year old boys. Have you had to adapt activities and things like that or how have you had to make kind of accommodations for him as he's getting older?

David Apple (13:18):
It's actually interesting because he does have a lot of energy, as you said, like a four and a half year old and he goes to school, he goes to a regular school and everything, but he directs his energy in different places than I did as a kid or a lot of other kids do because of his mobility challenges. He's not running around or I'm not worried about him running in the middle of the street or stuff like that. He directs his energy more towards creative outlets and he's very curious and he's very observant and much more patient than most kids his age. It's less me directing him towards this is what you should be doing and more following his direction to his creative outlets and what he enjoys and is interested in.

Adam Fishman (13:59):
That's great. He's finding different superpowers to explore. It would seem like.

David Apple (14:03):
That's exactly the way I think about it. Absolutely. I always like to think that our strengths have weaknesses and our weaknesses have strengths and the physical weakness is developing all these other types of strengths in him that are way beyond what I have in terms of strengths in those areas. And actually wrote the children's book on this theme. I didn't mention this before, but on the theme that our differences make us stronger.

Adam Fishman (14:27):
Not yet published, I imagine on the cusp of being published. Maybe.

David Apple (14:31):
It's been picked up by a publisher but not yet published.

Adam Fishman (14:33):
Wow. Well, we'll have to come back and revisit this conversation once it is published. We can get a deep dive on the book.

David Apple (14:40):
With pleasure. Yeah, I'd love that.

Adam Fishman (14:42):
So how has Ari's illness changed your approach to parenting or your family's approach to parenting?

David Apple (14:51):
The honest answer is I'm not exactly sure because he's my first child and so it's all I know. And on one hand I'm French, I grew up in France. Growing up in France is a very, the vibe of everything's going to be okay, just let your kid do their thing. On the other hand, I was also a very protective older brother to my two younger sisters, and I didn't know which of those two energies would be most me as a dad. And I think there's a little bit of both observing myself compared to other parents. I'm more protective of Ari. I'm more like on the playground, I'm following him more closely. I feel unable to have any type of meaningful conversation with another parent. I always need to track where he's at when we're at birthday party or whatever. And then I thought, well, maybe that's just the type of parent I am. But then with my daughter, I'm not that way at all. I'm more kind of laissez-faire vibe. But maybe that's also the way people are with their second kid. So again, I'm not exactly sure.

Adam Fishman (15:50):
We don't really get the opportunity to A/B test a parenting style with the same kid, so.

Adam Fishman (15:56):
Ari's four and a half, obviously four and a half years ago, things like ChatGPT didn't exist, deep research didn't exist. And I have heard from more than a few parents whose kids have rare diseases or unique cancer diagnosis or something like that who are using use AI tools to better understand and then advocate for their kids' health. I guess I have two part question here. One, have you explored that at all and what have you learned? And then barring that, or maybe in addition to that, are there any resources, schools, therapies, doctors that have been especially helpful to you and your family, with Ari's diagnosis?

David Apple (16:39):
I didn't have the luxury of having ChatGPT when we were trying to figure out what was going on. Instead, we have Google, which I love Google for many reasons, but when you're looking for the origin of a problem, it brings you down very dark places. To give you an example, for about 48 hours, I was convinced that they made some sort of mistake when they were giving Ari the medicine before he was circumcised, and I was convinced that it was his circumcision that caused all those symptoms. In retrospect, it's totally crazy and the doctor eventually told me it can't be that. But I read a story of a kid who right after the circumcision had similar-ish symptoms and I couldn't sleep for 48 hours. So I wish CharGPT was around at that point. So yeah, I think ChatGPT is super helpful for that.

David Apple (17:27):
I use it for now as more in my new career of educating myself and learning more about the underlying biology and mechanism of action of the disease. And the resources I found most helpful at the time was the nonprofit. As I mentioned, we saw all the experts at UCSF and all the experts at Stanford and even the neurologist there didn't have any clue, didn't hint at it could be a genetic thing, it could be CMT, and they had never seen a patient with that. Whereas when you go to the nonprofit, that's all they see, and therefore you get a lot more nuanced perspective on the symptoms on what to do, what to make sure we're doing what to make sure we're not doing. So that's been the most valuable resource for me. I'm a little bit biased. I joined the board of that nonprofit, so I'm a board member of the CMTA. They've been incredibly helpful.

Adam Fishman (18:18):
That's a nonprofit that's devoted to research and studying this particular type of genetic disease.

David Apple (18:25):
So CMT, Charcot-Marie-Tooth is kind of a family of diseases. They all have the similar symptoms, but before genetics, they couldn't diagnose what the genetic cause was. So it's only since the nineties that we have now subtypes. So that's why Ari has CMT 1A and others have 1B and 4C and et cetera.

Adam Fishman (18:45):
So you did mention a few questions ago that ARI tends to pursue more creative endeavors and things that are sort of he can do that don't necessarily have a huge physical component to it. He probably still has a little bit of that desire for independence and wanting to do things and maybe not quite being able to do them. You mentioned kind of like your head on a swivel on the playground, but how do you manage safety and physical limitations while also allowing him to be a four and a half year old kid?

David Apple (19:20):
What comes to mind? To answer that question is there is a conversation I had with a 9-year-old girl. So there's a family, the father is also on the board with me at the CMTA. They came to Stanford for surgery for their daughter Hazel, who has CMT. I asked her, what advice do you have for me as a parent of the kid with CMT? And she said something that was so wise beyond her 9-year-old age. She said preventing him from doing the things he wants to do will hurt him so much more than if you allow them to do it and he hurts himself doing them. And I thought that was such a good way to frame how I should think about those things. So what I try to do is make him aware of where there's dangers. And granted, I'm probably a little bit overly concerned about where every danger could be, but then kind of let him navigate and he's cautious by nature probably as a result of his condition. So I let him figure out where his boundaries are rather than telling him what his boundaries should be.

Adam Fishman (20:20):
Wow. And what a thoughtful response from a 9-year-old kid too. That's pretty amazing. What kind of treatments or therapies or interventions does Ari's condition require now as a four and a half year old?

David Apple (20:35):
Unfortunately, like I said, there's no treatment, no cure. There's not even take these supplements or eat more of this or less of that, which is frankly very frustrating. It doesn't even feel like there's something I can do. The main thing that we do is physical therapy and occupational therapy. Ari does that three times a week. It's a big time commitment for him. For me, it's in the middle of the day every time. I guess another fun thing we do is my wife found these books of animal yoga. It's all these little insects or animals that are doing these different poses and we do those together at home. So that's an activity that we do. And we live on a third story walkup San Francisco. We always encourage him to do as many of the steps as he can. One of the symptoms is also fatigue, so we don't want to overdo it, but just encourage him to build that strength and do the steps. Steps are really hard for him.

Adam Fishman (21:27):
What have doctors told you to expect and what have you learned you need to expect as he gets older?

David Apple (21:35):
We don't know. So the range of normal for CMT is quite broad. Some people have said because he has an earlier onset and a more severe presentation than most kids, that's part of why we got an earlier diagnosis than most that's a negative sign for the future because it's progressive, so it gets worse. So you're starting from a lower point. On the other hand, I met one family that kindly took the time to speak with Christina and me. They have three kids who all have CMT and the kid that presented most severe when they were younger, presented less severe than the others when they were older. It's just unknown and the unknown sometimes is even harder than knowing. But that's kind of where we're at.

Adam Fishman (22:18):
One of the things that I wanted to talk about is that how you've kind of moved into trying to know as much about this and working on this. So you founded a company with a name I love, which is I think is a little bit of a playoff of the name of this sort of phonetic sound of this disease, but you started a company called Shark Tooth Biotech. And I should ask you, where did the name for Charcot-Marie-Tooth, where did that illness name come from? Does it come from the person who discovered it sounds French?

David Apple (22:50):
It's three scientists. So one's last name was ko, another one Marie and another one tooth. That's where it comes from.

Adam Fishman (22:57):
Okay. So you've started this company called Shark Tooth Biotech. Tell me about this company.

David Apple (23:03):
Before I do, I just want to say something about the name that inspired me. Cystic Fibrosis is another rare disease where the kids couldn't pronounce cystic fibrosis. And so internally they call it 60. And I thought that was such a kind of beautiful little story. When I was thinking about a name, I thought of a lot of names. And when I landed on Shark tooth, it was just the obvious one because I'm focused on my son's disease. What gave me the conviction to start Shark Tooth is as a board member of the CMTA, I could see all the research that was ongoing and all the research that was being proposed because as a board member, you get to vote on those things. What we fund in parallel, I was digging deeper and deeper into the science and it became clear where the first treatment would come from. And yet that there wasn't a lot of research going on in that space. I can get into why, but that gap or that kind of white space is what gave me the conviction to say, I know what problem needs to be solved and not enough people are working on it. So I want to work on it.

Adam Fishman (24:04):
And tell me why more research wasn't being done or why more investment wasn't being done in this particular area.

David Apple (24:12):
It's actually the most common rare disease without a treatment or a cure. It affects 1.6 million people worldwide and 70,000 people in the U.S. So it's common in terms of rare disease, but it's not common like cancer or diabetes or something like that. So it doesn't attract the big dollars from that perspective. And the other aspect of diseases that attracts a lot of dollars is how severe a disease is because that means that the patient population is less risk averse. The way you would treat cancer is not the way you would treat a headache, just to put into perspective. So the more cutting edge technologies that are still more risky, they go after the more severe diseases. And so CMT is in this weird middle ground that is not common enough and not severe enough. There is financial viability because it's kind of common. The way biotechs work is they often have their technology and then they look for what indications they want to go after and they choose two or three and CMT never makes it into those two or three. That's the problem.

Adam Fishman (25:16):
Interesting. But for your company it does. That's all it's focused on. One of the things that's interesting, so you're on the board of the CMTA, you started a company that's devoted to researching and the goal is to find a cure or a treatment for this disease. This has kind of become a bit of your life's work. I dunno if you would argue against that. Probably not. The other thing is, and this is I think really interesting thing you mentioned to me, which is that there is a risk that you could become so absorbed in participating in the CMTA community in running this company that you might start to neglect your relationship with your kids. That would be a failure for you. It also sounds like maybe this wasn't the perspective that you had your whole life. Certainly not when you were a CRO of a company. And so I just thought maybe you could tell me a little bit about what you've learned about yourself and how you want to live your life while balancing your life's work with also being available for your kids.

David Apple (26:20):
So as a exec in a startup, I always found it hard to switch off whether I was a Typeform notion or eventually a Zingtree, I would think about the business problems on weekends, on evenings, but then I felt like I was not switched off. And actually what inspired me was I read this book called How Will You Measure Your Life, which I highly recommend. And it talks about that. It talks about you may have this life strategy where you want to be a great dad and you want to be a great husband, and yet the way you allocate your time is not aligned with your strategy. And that's how people end up divorced or not having a good relationship with their kid. And so I wanted to be deliberate about not falling in that trap. And it's even more so the case with what I'm doing now with Shark Tooth because I'm doing this first and foremost for my son, there is financial viability.

David Apple (27:12):
I hope I'll return money to investors, but that's not why I'm doing this. And if I were to five years down the road, develop a cure for Ari, but in doing that I didn't spend enough time with him and I didn't build the close relationship I'd like to have with my son, then it would totally beat the point. And I'd like to think that if he could communicate this to me now, he would say, I want more of a balance. I don't want you to just spend all your time there and not have a relationship with me. I think he would want me to do both. The balance I'm trying to strike is say I'll be very intense during what I consider to be my work hours and outside of that I will shut everything off and just be as present as I can be.

Adam Fishman (27:53):
And how big is Shark Tooth is something you recently started?

David Apple (27:59):
Incorporated in September last year.

Adam Fishman (28:00):
Wow. And do you have employees? What is it looking like right now?

David Apple (28:05):
I have six awesome volunteers that are helping in various aspects. I have an outstanding scientific advisory board who help me assess where to deploy the funds I've raised, and I'm a team of one. I don't pay myself a salary. I still do a little bit of advisor work in the software world on the side so that I don't have to pay myself a salary, which I enjoy on the side as well. That's the operation right now. But it has been going really well. I have six research partnerships already set up to work on different shots on goal for CMT 1A. So I'm really excited about the way things are going.

Adam Fishman (28:44):
Impressive though, six research partnerships in a very short amount of time. That's good. Something to be proud of.

David Apple (28:51):
Thanks. I'm really thrilled and grateful for it.

Adam Fishman (28:55):
Having gone through this and having had multiple rounds of doctors and hospitals say, oh, it's not that. It's probably this other thing, or don't do that test because you're not going to find out anything. And then realizing that that wasn't necessarily true. Is there anything that you wish the medical community understood about CMT 1A, better? I mean especially for the youngest kids.

David Apple (29:25):
The main thing that the medical community could help with is the importance of an early diagnosis. Until you have a diagnosis, you don't have a diagnosis code, you don't get access to the state services, the right specialists. And you also as a parent in terms of just your kind of mental health, you don't know what you're up against and you feel like you're failing every day that you see your child struggle to do something and you don't know what's causing it. You just feel like I'm unfailing him. The doctors won't quarterback. So I wish they did more quarterbacking. I realize that along the way and I realize that I had to be the quarterback and when that shift happened, we got where we needed to go. But I wish the medical community was more treating it like it was their kid as opposed to another 15-minute appointment that they just need to get through it and write up notes for.

Adam Fishman (30:14):
I think you told me too in the prep for this, that you have a great amount of respect for the medical community. It's not necessarily any individual doctor's fault or anything like that, that this is how they operate, but there is more of a middle ground that we could strike here that would be beneficial for kids at the youngest ages.

David Apple (30:34):
I think like any profession, there's great people, that's great people. Maybe you catch someone on a good day, maybe you catch someone on a bad day. But there's definitely been people speaking to us from a position of they're the expert speaking with incredible level of confidence and it turns out they were absolutely wrong. That's hard.

Adam Fishman (30:51):
If there's a parent who's listening to this and they just learned that their own kid has O Mary tooth disease, what would you say to them?

David Apple (31:03):
I would definitely start by saying, I'm sorry. Diagnosis is hard. It's hard to know that there's no treatment or cure. It's hard to know that it's progressive. And I would also say welcome to this great community that's almost more like a family where we really care about each other. And so you're part of this community and family now, so welcome to that. And there's hope. There's a lot of investment in various types of research for all the different subtypes. There's hope with AI that the path to treatments will just get faster and less expensive. So those are the main points that I would say.

Adam Fishman (31:41):
Yeah, something to be hopeful for. Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit about some frameworks that you found especially useful as a dad. And maybe this is also you and your wife finding these useful. Some of them are related to rare diseases and some of them are not. That's what this show's all about. So the first one, and I want to come back to this, you've mentioned this now a few times and that is that your job as a parent with a kid who has a rare disease is not to be the expert, but it's to be the advocate. So tell me about that framing.

David Apple (32:14):
Yeah, I think this applies to all parents because the more I speak with parents, the more when they open up, everybody worries about something. I remember coming home and telling my parents about, I just spoke with this doctor and they said this, and my mom who was a nurse helped me in saying, your job is not to be the expert. You can't challenge the expert on their perspective. Your job is to be Ari's advocate. He doesn't have a voice and you need to be his voice. And I thought that was a really great way to frame it because it allows me to challenge the experts not in what they're saying or not in their expertise, but rather in the experience that Ari has and that I have as his parent.

Adam Fishman (33:00):
So that's be the advocate, not necessarily the expert. You have two kids now, so how do you think about what to do when you have baby number two? And this will be very valuable, a lot of people listening to this show who are going from one to two kids. So what is your framework for how to think about baby number two?

David Apple (33:19):
Yeah, this is TikTok wisdom that I think I picked up these different things from TikTok, but they were super helpful. And so I always share them with people who are expecting their second hand. The first one is when you're taking your oldest child, child number one let's say is asking you to play with them and you have to change your newborn baby's diaper. You don't say, Hey, I can't play with you now because I'm changing the baby's diaper, but rather I'm sorry, I can't play with you right now. Be available in 10 minutes. And that way you're not blaming the baby because if every time they want to play, you're blaming that you have to spend time with the baby, they end up having an issue with the baby as opposed to just you saying you're not available right now. So I thought that was a very easy thing to apply and it's so obvious and yet if I hadn't read it, I probably wouldn't have thought of it. So that was helpful. And then the other one was when we took the baby home from the hospital to bring a present for the older child, from the baby, not from the parents that makes them grateful and already have a positive view of the baby and also to introduce the baby in a neutral space, not in their room or not in the parents' room, but in a neutral space. So those were the tips that we applied that. Again, you can't ab test, so who knows, but they seem to work for us.

Adam Fishman (34:33):
Okay. The third framework you told me was just about spouse concepts and chapter three, I dunno what that means, but tell me about that.

David Apple (34:45):
I read this and it really resonated. It said you basically, your relationship goes through various stages or chapters. So chapter one is you love every single thing about them. Every little fault is actually beautiful and you love their morning breath, everything's amazing. Then you evolve into chapter two, and maybe it coincides with having kids, maybe not, but certainly all the things that you used to find little quirks that you liked can become a little hard or frustrating and there's a lot more conflict. And then hopefully you evolve to this chapter three where you've learned how to fight, how to resolve conflict, and it's kind of another level of relationship that's even more rewarding than chapter one. The problem is that this post said is most couples don't make it through chapter two. And we certainly, I'm sure you see that with your surroundings. I certainly see a lot of couples kind of separate during chapter two, and we're trying to avoid that. So that's the concept of the chapter three, but just knowing that you're going through these phases I think is helpful to be like, it's not just us, it's a phase and we're going to get through it. And especially with kids, there's always more to do than there's time available to do it. So it's inevitable to have some friction around that.

Adam Fishman (36:06):
And one of the reasons I do this podcast is so that people can realize a little bit that they're not alone. Everyone goes through these chapters. So I like that way of thinking about it. It's a good framework. Tell me a little bit about couples therapy. This is another thing that you mentioned.

David Apple (36:22):
Yeah, so that's definitely for us a necessary tool to get through. Chapter two is we work with the therapist who helps us navigate how to resolve conflict, how my wife is a better communicator than me. There's no question about that. More in touch with her feelings and her emotions than me. So sometimes if she communicates something, I don't hear it the way she intends and vice versa. And that it's really helpful to have some neutral third party that helps us hear each other better and it gives us frameworks to how to resolve the kind of inevitable conflicts that arise. It's something that I feel like not enough people talk about. It still has some stigma around it. So I wanted to make sure I mentioned it because I think it's important and everybody goes to the gym to take care of their physical health. I really think everybody should see a therapist to help with their mental health or at least for their relationship, so.

Adam Fishman (37:16):
I love that, and thank you for saying that because as you mentioned, not enough people talk about that. So it's okay to talk about that stuff. Last thing I wanted to talk about framework wise is me time. So this is a concept that you and your wife have together. Tell me about what me time is in your family and what inspired it.

David Apple (37:37):
I guess I'll start with what inspired it is. Of course we have friends who divorced and often they miss having all the time with their kids, but also they're very grateful that they have just time for them alone to do whatever the F they want. And we were like, well, how about we try to get the positive without getting divorced? What we did is each weekend on Saturday, I get two hours in the morning, she gets two hours in the afternoon and on Sunday she gets two hours in the morning. I get two hours in the afternoon, so basically four hours a weekend. We've actually met other couples who do blocks of four hours. We prefer to do two, but to each their own. And it's just time for you to do whatever you want to do, whether it's go to the gym or sit at a cafe or meet with a friend or whatever. And that's been really nice to have a break from all of the things. So yeah, I highly recommend that.

Adam Fishman (38:30):
And that's just something that you too. You have your standard block, it's scheduled in you alternate and afternoon, and how long have you been doing that?

David Apple (38:38):
Years, and I have to give credit to my wife because she is the organizer we co-created, but it was her initiative, a list of tasks that we know we needed to have done and who would do what tasks. Not to square keep, but rather to remove that friction. I take out the garbage. That's just something I don't have to ask who's going to do it and we can remove that. I'll just do that. One of her things is having a schedule and this was part of the schedule. So I think it's just a great part of the schedule.

Adam Fishman (39:05):
The idea of making that list that's come up a few times in this show. I had a guest, Garov talked about the kind of single-threaded owner concept for various responsibilities in the household. So love that. It provides clarity, right?

David Apple (39:19):
Yeah. I like just Getting on with it and not debating who's going to do it.

Adam Fishman (39:23):
What is one of your favorite ways to spend your me time on the weeken?

David Apple (39:26):
I go to the gym. That's my main thing. When I was writing the book, I would go to a cafe and sometimes riding a bike, just getting outside.

Adam Fishman (39:35):
Okay. You have a few. What I would describe as hot takes or somewhat contrarian takes, I think these are probably things that people can relate to, but maybe not everyone. The first one is don't follow your passion. Tell me about that. That seems very contrary to what most people hear and talk about and think about.

David Apple (39:55):
Yeah, I thought I would go the controversial route. So when I took a step back from working full time, then I joined the board of the CMTA before ever thinking I would start shard tooth. And I thought being on the board of CMTA would be my contribution to moving the needle for Aria's disease. And I was trying to figure out what I would do next. And people's advice inevitably is follow your passion. What I've come to realize is that I think that's the wrong advice because I think there's this quote about happiness. You don't pursue happiness. Happiness ensues from the activities that you do. And I think passion is the same way where you don't start with from a standstill to a passion, but rather your passion develops through pursuing your own curiosity and your interests and stuff like that. I thought my passions were sports and the environment. So I became the fractional CRO for a sports company, sports tech company, and the fractional CRO for a clean tech company. And I realized it didn't quite scratch the itch of those passions and it selling software in those industries. It wasn't moving the needle the way I had maybe imagined. I don't really know what I imagined at the time, but I think anyways, that's a helpful reframe.

Adam Fishman (41:08):
Yeah, so maybe start with a curiosity. If you're following your curiosity, passion can come from that as you get deeper into something. Okay. Your second hot take, this is an interesting one. Everything is insignificant, so stop worrying about your legacy. Tell me about that. You might be accused of being nihilistic or something, but I think there's more to it.

David Apple (41:32):
This kind of slapped me in the face when I was watching the Cosmos series. Have you watched that?

Adam Fishman (41:37):
I have not. Tell me about it.

David Apple (41:38):
Neil deGrasse Tyson. It's about the universe and you just realize how totally insignificant earth is in the scale of the universe. It's less than a grain of sand in the world is like the earth to the universe. And then when you look at human history in the history of the earth, it's another tiny millisecond of a day. And then when you look at just our own history, ask me who the 22nd president of the United States is, I have no idea. And that's the most important person for a period of time in the States. The bottom line is just we will all be forgotten. Nothing we do actually matters in the grand scheme of things, other than the terrible things that we can do to the environment. I talk about myself, I was thought a lot about my legacy or how I would want to be remembered and it was kind of liberating to be like, actually that doesn't matter.

David Apple (42:32):
The focus should be on today on enjoying my life, being around for the people I love and people I care about. And that should be the focus not on how will people will remember me in a hundred years. And actually for me, the personal story is my ancestors immigrated from Eastern Europe, they fly Eastern Europe, they went through Ellis Island, that's only two generations ago, but I don't know their names. I have never seen a picture of them. I don't know what their favorite color was. I don't know anything about them other than my life is better thanks to them. And they're forgotten even in some of the most important people in my family, small family history. I think that puts things into perspective and helps worry about the things that are worth worrying about and not.

Adam Fishman (43:14):
And maybe also helps people keep their ego in check too in some regards. Not that this is your problem necessarily, but another way. Good way of thinking about it. So I love that. Okay, only a couple more things from you before we get to lightning round. So you worked with a guy named Paul Campillo at Typeform and he was Typeform first marketing hire. I did some research on him in the US and he ended up being their head of brand and storyteller. And so he is a perspective on stories that you shared with me and life that I really liked. And I'm going to read that to you and then I want to hear your thoughts on this. So in every great story, the character faces some kind of obstacle, something they have to overcome to grow. Without that, there's no real story and no real change or growth. How do you David relate to that?

David Apple (44:04):
He said it in the context of storytelling. He's a very wise man and very philosophical. And so I know he intended it about life. And that's the way I interpret it is a lot of people when they face a challenge or an obstacle, their first reaction is, why me? This is not fair. And maybe they go into depression. His perspective, which I like is rather this is not a sidetrack in your or a blip in your journey. This is your journey. This is your opportunity to grow and to learn. And I think that reframe is a healthy reframe when you're facing something hard. Of course, I'm not saying you shouldn't have time to mourn it or except that it's difficult. We don't need to kind of ignore that, but also see it as an opportunity for growth. I really like that framework.

Adam Fishman (44:56):
And then this has helped you develop kind of a unique perspective on failure. So tell me your perspective on failure.

David Apple (45:04):
Yeah, this was actually, I saw a friend of mine, mercy Grace, she had a startup that didn't work out. She's brilliant and I saw her tweet. I never fail. I either succeed or I learn any obstacle that I've faced. It either turns out to be a success and a great growth opportunity or a learning opportunity. And even in my advisory work, I advise a lot of SaaS companies. I feel like I talk a lot more about the failures that I have and what I learned from them than the big successes that I've been part of. So

Adam Fishman (45:41):
I love that. I'll give Mercy a shout out after this episode. I'll send her a message on Slack or something. Okay. Final thing for you. If people who are listening to this want to follow along on your journey or support you and your family or your cause, what's the best way for them to do that?

David Apple (46:01):
What I need most right now is I'm in the middle of fundraising. So any investments or donations I'm able to accept both would be much appreciated. And feel free to get in touch with me. My email address is apple@sharptooth.bio or go to my website, which is shark tooth.bio and go to the contact us. I'd love to hear from you and happy to tell more about the story.

Adam Fishman (46:25):
Well, we will do everything in our power on this show, which is just a little, but we'll try. We will either succeed or we'll learn, right?

David Apple (46:33):
From the fundraising perspective. I've learned a lot.

Adam Fishman (46:35):
Yeah. Cool. Well we will send people your way, so thank you. Okay, let's do lightning round. Tell me, David, what is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased? Double stroller.

David Apple (46:50):
And I also bought this thing that heats up the wet wipes because wet wipes are always cold, right? So the kids always hate when you have to wipe them. And having them warm changed that whole experience.

Adam Fishman (47:03):
Now quick follow up. Did you go side by side double stroller or front overlapping? Double stroller

David Apple (47:09):
Overlapping one where one faces you and the other one faces out. Got it.

Adam Fishman (47:13):
Cool. Okay. What is the most useless parenting product you've ever purchased?

David Apple (47:18):
That prize would have to go to the airplane child seat. We didn't want to bring our whole child seat on the plane and so we bought this other thing that you can use in a car and in a plane. It was terrible. And hopefully you don't really need it in a plane, so.

Adam Fishman (47:33):
Okay, avoid the airplane seat. True or false, there is only one correct way to load the dishwasher?

David Apple (47:39):
True.

Adam Fishman (47:39):
And is that your way or your wife's way?

David Apple (47:42):
You know the answer.

Adam Fishman (47:45):
What is your signature dad's superpower?

David Apple (47:48):
Making my kids laugh.

Adam Fishman (47:49):
Okay. Crazier block of time in your house. 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM or 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM.

David Apple (47:56):
Morning is terrible.

Adam Fishman (47:59):
Are you a morning person?

David Apple (48:00):
I'm becoming one. I'm realizing. And it's just the battle to get dressed shoes on, eat breakfast. If I could skip that every day, my stress, I'd have less gray hair. I'd be such a happier person.

Adam Fishman (48:15):
Okay. The ideal day with your kids involves this one activity.

David Apple (48:20):
I'm going to say laughing, playing outside? Yeah.

Adam Fishman (48:22):
Okay. If you were kids, those same kids had to describe you in one word, what would it be?

David Apple (48:27):
So I asked Ari this question yesterday and he said silly, which I was very proud of, so.

Adam Fishman (48:33):
You're winning. You're winning. What is your go-to dad wardrobe, Marine layer. Oh, same. They make great clothing. Love it. How many dad jokes do you tell on average in a given day?

David Apple (48:47):
I was accused of dad jokes long before I had kids. The answer if you ask my wife would just be too many. But every opportunity I have is probably the correct.

Adam Fishman (48:57):
Okay. Well I've got one for you right now that you can share with your wife. I'm sure she's going to love it. Why did the coach put the frog in the outfield?

David Apple (49:05):
Go for it.

Adam Fishman (49:06):
He's really good at catching flies. Alright, bring that home to Christina. She's going to love it. Okay. What is the most difficult kids' TV show that you've ever had to sit through?

David Apple (49:19):
Definitely CoComelon.

Adam Fishman (49:20):
Coco Mellon takes the prize in this show. What about a favorite kids' movie or TV show?

David Apple (49:28):
Bluey.

Adam Fishman (49:29):
Also takes the prize.

David Apple (49:31):
I want to be the dad in Bluey. He's.

Adam Fishman (49:33):
Okay. Is there a nostalgic movie that you just can't wait to force your kids to watch with you?

David Apple (49:40):
It would have to be a French movie, which is called Les Visiteurs, I don't even know if I still think it's funny, but as a kid I really liked it.

Adam Fishman (49:47):
Okay. I may have to check this movie out. So usually I ask what is the worst experience you've ever had assembling a toy or a piece of furniture. But I discovered that you actually enjoy doing this. So I'm going to ask you the opposite, which is, what is the most enjoyable experience you've ever had assembling a children's toy or a piece of furniture?

David Apple (50:08):
It was my son's bed when we put Zoe into Ari's old crib and we wanted to get Ari a bed. My wife found this amazing bed that looks a little bit like, I dunno, a castle. And he was so excited to help me build it. And my dad was in town visiting from London. He helped build it too. So it was fun and the outcome was awesome. And Ari still loves it when we have friends visit and we show them around the house, Ari's always like.

Adam Fishman (50:34):
That's my bed. Well I want whatever Ari's got. That's what I've decided. How long can a piece of food sit on the floor in your house? And you will still eat it

David Apple (50:45):
On Thursdays for a long time? On Tuesdays. Very short time because our cleaning lady comes on Wednesdays.

Adam Fishman (50:53):
Love that, love that. Okay, and finally, what is your take on minivans?

David Apple (51:00):
Don't hate minivans. They just can't fit into my mini garage. That even my mini SUV compact, SUV doesn't quite fit in. We have to put the rear view mirrors in. Just doesn't fit city life right now.

Adam Fishman (51:15):
Okay. A clever excuse. The garage is too small for the minivan, that's why we can't get one. Alright, well David, it has been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you for talking to me so much about Ari and your work with Shark Tooth Bio. I really appreciate it and best of luck to you and your whole family.

David Apple (51:39):
Thanks for having me.

Adam Fishman (51:41):
  Thank you for listening to today's conversation with David Apple. Startup Dad is available in all your favorite podcast players and YouTube. Just search for Startup Dad to find it anywhere you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening and see you next week.