What 46 Dads Taught Me About Modern Fatherhood | Best of 2025 (Startup Dad Recap)

[00:00:00] Adam Fishman: This past year, we recorded and shared 46 episodes of Startup Dad, 46 conversations with founders, operators, and leaders who are also dads and occasionally moms. There were surprising similarities and even more surprising differences. They’re all building companies, raising kids, and trying to do both without completely losing their minds.
Or their keys or their AirPods. We also had a lot of accomplishments this year, recording the 100th episode, winning a Webby honoree for my conversation with bestselling author Carla Berg doubling my audience year over year, growing new listenership by almost 900%. Reaching 50 countries with startup dad and fans sharing startup dad, more than 96% of other podcasts startup Dad was never supposed to be about having the answers.
It was about honest conversations about what it’s like to raise a family while you’re also trying to build something that matters,
the winds, the mess ups, the stuff nobody really warns you about. As we look back on this season, a few themes kept showing up over and over again. Not because we planned it that way, but because this is what modern fatherhood actually looks like. So to kick off 2026, we wanted to pause, zoom out a bit and reflect on what we heard throughout 2025.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe to startup ad on YouTube or Spotify so you never miss an episode. You’ll find it everywhere you get your podcasts. Let’s start with something that basically everyone agreed on. There is no such thing as a balance in parenting, not if you’re building a company.
Not if you’re raising kids, and definitely not if you’re trying to do both at the same time. What dads talked about instead was integration. Constant trade-offs and loads of recalibration.
there’s no such thing as work-life balance.
tell me about that.
[00:02:12] Jonathan Jamil: that’s the thing, man. Like I, I started the business, I was a new dad,my wife and I had only been married for not even three years at the time.
And I was always searching for balance. Like, okay, I’m gonna work nine to five and then I’m gonna be a dad early mornings and after 5:00 PM
That just never, it never existed. It never happened because I was working 6:00 AM to 8:00 PM or sometimes on weekends and it would actually eat at me. ‘cause I’m like, no, like there has to be a balance. This, this exists. People talk about it. And you know, after so many years of building. I’ve realized that
There’s no such thing as balance. It’s just managing the day to day. Like today, I have, you know, this podcast and my kids know that I’m not gonna be available for the next X amount of time, but that shouldn’t take a toll on me. And it used to ’cause I was like, no, I, I gotta find that middle ground.
And for me, I always just tell people like, on Monday you might be the best, CEO, the best boss, the best employee, whatever that might be. But on Tuesday you might be the best mom or you might be the best dad. there literally is no such thing as balance.
It’s just being the best that you can be every single day. Your team will understand your, your boss will understand your kids will understand. It’s just whenever you’re with your kids. Be present, in that moment. Don’t look at your phone, don’t think about work.
[00:03:27] Adam Fishman: That idea showed up in different ways. For some dads, it meant rejecting the idea that you can just flip a switch between who you are at work and who you are at home.
um,
you don’t subscribe to the work mode dad mode thing.
you told me that you’re the same person everywhere, tell me how that shows up in your life.
[00:03:46] Adam Lieb: Yeah, I think that’s something that I didn’t used to do that I definitely used to do the, like, you know, you wear different hats and you take the hat off and put the other hat on thing. And what I found was, for me that was too hard. I couldn’t always make that transition. Like, you know, the proverbial, you walk in the door and you know, you put the, you know, like Dick Van Dyke or whatever, you know, you put the hat down and the briefcase down and all of a sudden you’re like, not at work anymore and you’re at home. That didn’t work for me, I guess. So, uh, rather than, I guess fighting against. That, I’ve kind of gone maybe the opposite way and really just tried to like, you know, I don’t know, sound cheesy. I embrace the whole me all the time, and obviously it doesn’t mean I’m like actively parenting when I’m like, on a board meeting or whatever. But I do think that I definitely share a lot more about what’s going on with work with, and some of this, my kids are older and like, I don’t know, this would’ve made as much sense when they were really little, but I like, share more of what’s going on at work with my kids, so they can see.
I’m like, you know, I don’t just like go into an office and disappear and I’m like, come back out and I’m a totally different person. Like, I am the same me and I have problem just like them. I have problems with, you know, colleagues or customers and friends and like all these things that, that they do.
So I think that’s helped me a lot.
my son is a really avid baseball player. He plays on multiple baseball teams and
I’ve been to hundreds of his baseball games because I’m able to find ways to, change my work schedule around to fit into that or this. He’s been playing summer ball. which is like a really casual league where they keep score, but like, there’s not playoffs and like, it, it’s really meant to just practice.
They’re at like six to eight o’clock two days a week. I bring my laptop and I’m able to get, you know, an hour and a half worth of work done, sort of, you know, between his at-bats and fielding plays and stuff. And not, I, I guess I don’t feel guilty about that.
I’m not like, oh well I’m supposed to be in dad mode and now I’m encroaching on my dad mode life because I’m doing work while I’m in dad mode. I’m like, Nope, I’m all the same
person. And like I’m able to like, be there and support him and cheer for him and do all that stuff, but also get an hour and a half worth of, you know, work done, which, you know, can make it a little easier for me to leave early to go pick him up at camp and take him to the places or whatever.
’ cause I
get a full day of work done.
So, yeah, I think it’s made me not have to kind of feel maybe guilty on some of those things because I recognize that they’re all trade-offs and they’re all trade-offs with me the same, who’s the same person
regardless of whether I’m at work or at home.
[00:05:52] Adam Fishman: Others talked about how having kids forces clarity in a way no other experience really does.
why do you believe that it’s easier to start company as a parent?
[00:06:03] Rishabh Jain: I think there’s two aspects of it, at least that I have felt. the first is that if you’re, like, the most extreme opposite is like if you’re single, you really don’t have any other force in your life pulling at your time. and so then you can just like work all the time. And yes, that has like been true for me in the past, right?
Where it’s just like without any other force to pull on your time, you could like easily work 17, 18 hours. Like very feasible for, especially for like founder character type of people. I don’t think that that’s good because it is easy to fill your time with low impact work.
And I think that, that the biggest, in this dimension, the The biggest reason why having kids and not having the ability to like randomly fill your time is good, is that you have no choice but to ask like, Hey, what is actually the most important thing for me to work on?
And how do I work on that the most effectively? just like any startup focus is helpful. This is a forcing function for focus. and so actually underlying this take is I think a very common take, which is like focus is better than lack of focus. And I think that having kids just forces even more focus.
So that’s one dimension. The other one is more psychological and emotional, which is at least I think most of us, are like extremely selfish beings. And it’s not until you have kids that there’s someone who you actually love more than yourself. And my like best characterization of this is I’ll be like very upfront and say, if you had asked me anytime before having kids, like would you prefer you are sick or someone else is sick?
And pick like any other human, including my significant other, I would pick for the other person to be sick, like have a cold or whatever it is. But But if you were to ask me like, Hey, would you rather you be sick or your kid be sick? I would pick me every time. And I think that that psychological and emotional shift is a very big one.
[00:08:07] Adam Fishman: And sometimes that clarity turns into really practical systems that help dads navigate through the chaos of work, family, and everything in between.
[00:08:17] Jeremy King: we. Block our calendars for parenting time. I’ve done this since our first daughter was born.
it’s literally written in my calendar as being a dad time. That’s more of a message to me, but also anyone who can see my calendar, at any stage knows exactly what that means.
and I put that in my calendar every day, which occurring invite, 7:00 til 8:00 AM and 6:00 til 7:30 PM. If I’m in the uk, I make sure that I’m here for the 6:00 til 7:30 PM slot.
To do Bathtime, do bedtime, read stories, jump on a trampoline, catch the end of a movie, hopefully marine life related please and do parenting. ‘cause otherwise I. Won’t and other things will fill that time. I know myself well enough that I obey my calendar like Rowan Burgundy obeys an auto queue. If the calendar says, go to Hawaii and eat a pineapple, that’s what’s happening. And I will just obey that thing. So if I manage myself by writing, being a dad time, that’s what’s gonna happen that’s how we make it happen. And my wife has a similar system that manages her. Unusual quirks.
[00:09:23] Adam Fishman: The takeaway wasn’t to do more and run yourself ragged. In reality, it was to do fewer things on purpose.
Another theme that came up a lot in conversations was that of resilience, not making life easy for our kids, but instead giving them space to struggle, decide, fail, and figure it out on their own, giving them a lot of opportunities to get it wrong. When the stakes are lower,
[00:09:50] Oji Udezue: it is to, be able to run into opposition or disagreement or suffering and just be able to get through it. and it’s important because a lot of parents have the instinct to remove difficulty from their children. You know, you’ll see people talk about. we made it here so that they can have an easier life and all those kinds of philosophies. But, the species is very old. You know, homo sapiens, uh, you know, 300,000, maybe 50,000 years of recorded human history. we already know, and we’ve known for a very long time that suffering is what makes people, resilient. Suffering is what makes people and ease does not.
[00:10:37] Adam Fishman: that idea showed up again and again, letting kids make decisions, letting them feel consequences.
[00:10:45] Oji Udezue: I decided that I could distill boarding house into a more basic idea, which is the idea of. Independent decisions. I basically distilled my experience into 10,000 reps of independence. that was what boarding house did for me away from parental, whatever. It was like I practiced independence. And so in our lives, what I tried to do was to create an environment for 10,000 hours of independence.
So, I didn’t always succeed, but things like pumping the gas, getting groceries while I’m in the coffee shop, you go do it when, when they’re small, always prompting for decisions like, what’s your decision versus here’s mine. I think that’s a very helpful idea and that you can get super creative with. And then the second one is you have to, Stop catching them. Like you have to expose them to consequences or you lost the thing that I bought for you, and you want another one? Well now you have to go half seas or you have to bite it yourself. now you can feel the consequences. or just like, you know, you got hurt, you’re not bleeding out. but yeah, it, it hurts. Sorry.
[00:11:59] Adam Fishman: Sometimes it could look like entrepreneurship in the backyard.
[00:12:03] James Currier: two of them got together and then all four of ’em ended up doing it. And that was a project to create a physics camp in the backyard. Uh, in our little garage in our backyard for kids. So they were all 11 to 13 and they were doing this for kids who were sort of eight to 10, and they were basically teaching, freshman physics to kids, uh, in the neighborhood and, and around.
And the parents would pay $288 a week for them to take them from like 8:00 AM to one.
and they would be in our backyard. So half of it was babysitting, but half of it was launching little rockets and doing little cars with, you know, propellers and that kind of thing, and dropping eggs off the roof, you know, and they would make tie-dye t-shirts and they had the neuro camp logo on the T-shirts.
And, it was great. All and all four of them worked together. And then they split up the money and, and they would do it for the first year. They did it for two weeks. The next year they did it for three weeks. And, they would get mailing lists of all the parents and send it out and the kids would just flood in and it got bigger and bigger every year.
[00:13:03] Adam Fishman: Other times it looked like a quiet win that only a parent would notice.
[00:13:09] Zach Teutsch: the first independence task that Shula took on once we started this project was just going to the corner store to buy an ingredient as like part of dinner.
I just remember how she felt when she got home. Now the whole time my wife was like hiding behind trash cans, like trying to spy at her while she was walking the, you know, one and a half blocks eventually we got out of that phase. But just like when Shula came home, she was like two inches taller with pride.
It was so amazing.
[00:13:40] Adam Fishman: Nobody was saying that letting your kids fail is easy to watch, but they were all saying that it’s necessary. We also talked about the hard stuff, the stuff that doesn’t make it into the highlight reels of this parenthood journey.
[00:13:54] Aaron Francis: being laid off on paternity leave with your second set of twins. I might be the first one. I don’t know. I might be the first
it was rough. It was very rough. So at the time, uh, this is almost a full year ago at this point, um, so I have survived, um, barely, but at the time my wife and I had two, two year olds, so they were two and a half. And, we had a second set of twins.
So at that point, we had four kids under the age of three, and I was on paternity leave and got the call. I was supposed to return on a Friday, and I got the call on a Wednesday. Thank you for your service. And it was like, oh, f what do I do now? and continues to be incredibly. Difficult. it was one of those things where it’s like this is professionally the best time for me to go out on my own. I have a, business partner, but for us to go out on our own and on a personal side, it was the worst time to go out on our own. So I’m the sole breadwinner in our family. My wife works harder than me, but she gets paid nothing for it.
so I’m the sole breadwinner. We had at that 0.4 kids. We do have an au pair that lives with us ’cause we had four kids under three. and now suddenly the money or or the income is gone and, you know, I have type one diabetes, so healthcare kind of an important deal.
I also fortunately developed rheumatoid arthritis during that process, probably due to stress and lack of sleep.
And so like the world is closing in upon us and it was like, let’s start a business. And so, it was tough. recently, I wrote my year in review of 2024. And in there I just like fully admitted to like. Putting the big kids down at 7:00 PM and then walking out of their room and sitting at the top of the stairs and just weeping because it was like everything is on me and it is very difficult.
[00:15:43] Adam Fishman: There were stories of loss, fear, and moments where work just completely fell away.
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? I.
[00:16:00] David Apple: No, we were trying to throw 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, is an extra hour drive to back in each way. and we saw the specialist there that’s how we eventually got the diagnosis.
[00:16:33] Adam Fishman: Did you have to do genetic testing at some point to figure out what was going on? Yeah. That’s interesting.
[00:16:39] David Apple: like 20% of parents end up discovering what the cause of the delay is. Is that really where you wanna spend your time and energy? And for me and my wife, it was clearly, yes, that is where we wanna spend our time and energy.
And I’m I’m glad we did. the physical therapists, which by the way, we had to pay out of pocket for, ‘cause 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 wanna learn, like predisposition to Alzheimer’s or like that type of thing. So we don’t recommend it and you’ll have to pay outta pocket if you wanna do it.
[00:17:19] Adam Fishman: they basically said, Hey, you’re probably not gonna learn much from this. Or you’re gonna learn something that, you don’t really wanna learn, but it’s not gonna be related to this thing that’s happening to him right now. And you said, well, we’re gonna do is anyways.
and then you learned, from the results of that test that he had, CMT one a
[00:17:40] David Apple: And it was almost the last resort test ‘cause, you know, his balance was off. He couldn’t, he was missing developmental milestones. And, I went to an ear, nose, throat doctor to see if like 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 not in bio background whatsoever, genetic was not my first intuition to go to where now it seems so obvious,
[00:18:08] Adam Fishman: do you remember when you got the diagnosis back?
do you remember what you were feeling in that moment when that happened?
[00:18:17] David Apple: 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, you know, what every parent dreads to hear. there was. A little bit of relief because it doesn’t affect his cognitive skills, uh, which were fortunate.
Uh, and I thought he had cerebral palsy, which, uh, does affect cognitive skills. and there was a big also feeling of validation. Like we had so many experts had told us, stop worrying too so much. the diagnosis came with an apology of saying, we’re sorry that we had misled you, you were right.
There is something going on. there was some validation, but the, the main feeling was feeling devastated for my, for my son and for kind of what I had visualized as his life and life as his dad with him, you know?
[00:19:09] Adam Fishman: 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 gonna be me. what was that conversation like with your wife? Christina and sort of how did you, the two of you come to the conclusion that it should be you, to step back from, from day-to-day work?
[00:19:31] David Apple: 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 refuse to not just ignore it, but we refuse to be inactive around it. 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, agreed that it would make sense for me to step back and kind of champion this and allow her to pursue her successful
we knew something needed to change
that was the forcing function to, to make something happen.
[00:20:14] Adam Fishman: One thing that really stuck with me this season was how many dads, no matter from which walk of life they come from, said some version of this.
[00:20:23] Aaron White: realize that you’re signing up for the hardest thing you’ve ever done. Whichever of those two things. It is,and I think it’s just true. If you’ve never started a, a company, hardest thing you, you’ll have ever done, never had a child, hardest thing ever done, had a child, then start a company.
Still the new, hardest thing you’ve probably ever done. Right. That’s just true. Let go say yes to it ‘cause it’s not gonna change. So just say yes, you can handle more than you think you can. I do think that saying yes and leaning in to hard things is always the right answer.
Uh, in both worlds, no one’s coming to save you in either event. Actually, one other quote, I want this in my tombstone. Uh, adulthood is an illusion. Only children can see your child thinks you’re an adult. Uh, other children might, but there are no adults. Adults know that we’re all still just children pretending that we know what we’re doing even now, oh, we’re both sound, hopefully fairly confident or no squat right?
it’s an illusion. No one’s coming to save you. So just say yes and keep leaning in and if you keep showing up and doing the hard work. you will get better and better at it, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. it sounds reductive, but I just think that’s it. I don’t think enough people try either way is probably the number one failure mode.
You just gotta show up and try.
[00:21:36] Adam Fishman: It’s not meant to be discouraging, it’s meant to be grounding. This is hard because it matters.
One of my more interesting conversation topics this year was what it actually means to be a lead dad. I’m not talking about helping out around the house, but being the go to parent for everything.
[00:21:55] Paul Sullivan: A lead dad is the go-to parent, whether he works full-time, part-time, or devotes all of his time to his family. That’s part one. Part two is he’s there to support his spouse or partner in whatever they do. Uh, and part three is he’s an ally to working moms and caregivers in general in the office.
I was at a stage in my career where so much of my time was planned, not all of it, but like 80% of my time, I could more or less control. so I was able to take on this, this go-to parent role. The, the logistics of life is the easiest way talk about it.
And I was able to work from home much more often than anybody else in the pre pandemic world because, a column is due at the same time every week and nobody really tracks where you are. They just track that, that it arrives. but the interesting part in retrospect was that during those that time, I was what I now call an undercover lead dad. Like in my community, most of the caregiving at the time seemed, I, I know differently now, but at the time seemed to be an entirely by moms and paid caregivers, you know, nannies or pairs, et cetera. Um, and so I was, I love what I was doing, but I wasn’t like waving a flag going around town saying, Paul Sullivan, lead dad.
I was like most men defining myself by my job. I was waving the flag saying Paul Sullivan, New York Times columnist. there are actually a shit ton of dads in this lead dad role.
[00:23:10] Adam Fishman: And this is all legit data. This is US Census Bureau, labor statistics, pew. And the number I came up with was, was astounding. It was 25 million men in the United States. Our lead dads are, could be lead dads. That’s a third of all fathers. And A lot of dads talked about how this role is growing, even if it’s still invisible in a lot of places, and I’m excited for more conversations on this topic.
In 20 26,
[00:23:35] Roger Einstoss: you know, that many times in traditional families, it’s like the dad is helping, uh, the mom
we don’t see it that way. We are both, uh, raising, the children together. So it’s not that I’m helping you or you are helping me, we are both helping each other. And it’s very useful for us, that we both work. We both work from home. So, for instance, right now my wife is with my daughter because she’s feeling sick. but after this, podcast, I know that I will go to pick up my boy from school, because I know that she’s not working right now. I’m working right now, so in two hours it’s her turn and if the day was complicated because of the children and we need to work at night, we can do it. And that’s why I’m also, building my own company because I want freedom. I want to have that freedom to say, okay, I’m really happy to go. Every day at 4:00 PM to pick up my, my children from school and see, their faces when they see me.
teamwork, it’s about having a good balance. you know that most of the times, uh, kids always prefer mom over dad. It’s something. Natural, I dunno why, but we try to split the responsibilities.
I know if I will take, omero to, uh, swimming classes, you will take him to basketball classes. and that’s how we, uh, organize everything.
And a little tip every Sunday we take like five minutes to, check each other’s calendar to say, okay, this week I will need you to pick up the kids on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. also, you know that I go to the US five, six times a year and I know that it’s also hard for her because she stays here with the kids, uh, maybe a week, two weeks. Uh, so I know that when I come back. I will have all the work that I have done because I was traveling, and also I need more time for helping her.
it’s a balance.
[00:25:41] Adam Fishman: 1 of the biggest personal light bulb moments, at least for me this season, was mental load. It’s a conversation that happens a lot in mom circles, but doesn’t break through to dads a whole lot.
[00:25:53] Allison Daminger: cognitive labor, as I define it, is really about figuring out what your family needs, what it owes to others, and then ensuring that those needs and obligations get met. Right. And I, further break it down into four pieces. So we have anticipating needs, identifying options for meeting them, deciding and monitoring or following up, and I can break those down, but, but those are sort of the, the big picture. I often define it for people who are coming from more of a, a sort of professional context as project management, but for the household, right?
Somebody has to make sure that things get done in addition to the actual doing.
we, have frameworks for understanding chores. Things like cooking, cleaning, shopping, driving kids places, mowing the lawn, right? Those were established categories and people’s mental model was, you know, this is the work that’s required. And so I think without the language to say these things that you’re doing by instinct almost, right? It feels kind of intuitive or, or natural when you’re just, oh, I’m thinking about stuff, right? It’s not necessarily something that I chose to do in this moment. It just popped into my head, because there was no language, because, it was hard to point to a product, right?
So if I am anticipating, okay, you know, the holidays are coming, here’s what we need to do for travel, here’s what we’re gonna do for meals, right? That is a little bit amorphous in terms of what the outcomes are, to your point, until we get to the decision stage and the actual execution phase, right?
That’s when we start to see tangible products. And so for a lot of people, including the people doing the work, I think they just hadn’t conceptualized that this was valuable. So I think about a, woman that I interviewed and you know, I was asking her. Some questions about sort of, what happens when, you know you’re low on toilet paper?
Right? I don’t know. I just, I just notice it and I put it on a list. that is. Something, right? That is not nothing, but it, it just felt to her like, okay, this is a matter of a few seconds here and there. that’s the other component of it that makes this really tricky is we’re so used to thinking about work, whether it’s paid or unpaid work in terms of time, right?
How many hours are we spending on chores, on childcare, on, our employment and cognitive labor doesn’t really translate well into minutes and hours. There’ve been some, efforts to quantify this work and, you know, I think the, the measurement tools are getting better, but in the past when they tried to quantify it, they would come up with, you know, maybe an hour a week. that just did not match at all with the impact that my interviewees were telling me about. Right. And I think that’s because the clock is just the wrong tool for the job.
[00:28:43] Adam Fishman: It made a lot of dads realize that doing tasks isn’t the same thing as owning the work.
[00:28:49] Nikunj Kothari: someone like me just like takes a lot of pride.
Oh, I’m doing a, B, c or execution work like, you know, took out the grocery or just like handle the kid or did night duty and. To kind of realize that execution is not the only thing. It’s actually like the easiest thing to do with kids, like, you know, changing the diaper or, but I think actually like planning, whether it’s like, you know what to buy, where to keep it, what happens every stage.
That’s what takes a lot of the mental load versus execution’s far easier. And I think I learned this like for like, after a few years where I was just much more like, I’ll do the execution and I was taking pride. At least I was doing enough I didn’t realize that that actually the easy part versus really planning for your kids or thinking through what’s important for them.
takes far more time and energy versus you kind of patting yourself in the back and saying, Hey, at least you did A, B, C, which is just like not good enough.
[00:29:45] Adam Fishman: That conversation alone changed how a lot of us think about partnership at home.
Regardless of the guest, I always ask about their views on technology, screen time, and how they handle it at home. The answers were surprisingly polarizing and not in a simple, good or bad way.
[00:30:05] Chet Kittleson: the thing that is most important to me is to put my phone somewhere where it is inaccessible during what I’ll call family hours, which for me is generally five until bedtime or five, you know, five 30 at the latest until bedtime. I have been very good at getting home at the right time between five and five 15.
And, when I can put my phone in the bedroom, that helps a lot. I’ve tried lots of different devices. There’s a thing called Brick.
I actually really loved it. I don’t know why I’m not using it, to be totally honest, because I thought it was great.
[00:30:34] Adam Fishman: where you touch your phone to it and it like deactivates it basically,
[00:30:37] Chet Kittleson: you, you basically set it up to say, I don’t want any of these apps to work other than X or I want every app to work other than X. You, you sort of have the choice and I loved it. I would actually brick my phone and there’s a physical device that you put. On the fridge or you know, it, it, it’s a magnet.
you brick your device and then I would leave. And the cool thing about it is the only way to unb brick your device is to touch that same NFC, that same little, uh, magnet they give you. And so I had really no choice. There’s like five emergency un bricks, but then after that you can’t do anything. If you delete the app, it’ll open, but then you lose all your settings.
So for me, it, it was pretty effective. yeah, for me, when I put my phone away, that’s the best thing. But it’s hard. I mean, I’ve never been more addicted to a thing in my entire life.
I care so much. I feel like we’re creating a better world, and we’ve had such an absurd response, in our first nine months.
I’ve never experienced anything like this. and every time I look at my phone, there’s something really interesting. there’s a really influential person that sent us a message talking about how much I love Tin can, or there’s some new pr, you know, whatever it is. And so I’m like, I, it’s hard not to wanna look at my phone.
so yeah, it’s, a work in progress. I feel like I’ve got some, you know, tools that I put in place and, and I’m still definitely trying to figure it out.
my opinion is it’s important for you to figure out how to have a relationship with technology. It is going to be a part of your life and probably your job at some point.
but the important thing is, being aware. Of your relationship with that technology and having a balance and not being controlled by it. and so for us, that is like, I’d say we’re like relatively rigid on the rules. Like they used to do this and we, we took it away ’cause it was, it was too far.
but they don’t watch shows on weekdays.
so it’s like a weekend morning thing. Part of it is great. My wife and I get to sleep in a little bit more and they get their breakfast and watch shows. That’s great. Parents need that.
and the kids, it’s like special. And I’m like, awesome. I did cartoons as a kid.
I’m, I’m here. but week weekdays we don’t, and they’ll still ask sometimes. And it’s just like a firm No. You, like, we don’t do shows on the weekdays.
I don’t even know why. It just feels like, it’s like, that’s a great example of, I want you to experience that. There are times where you need to figure out something to do without technology and there are times we can use it.
We’ve been going back and forth lately on, like trips. Historically we were, that was like, we were like, rule rules aside, you get the, you get three movies on the way to Spokane to visit my wife’s parents. and our last few trips, you’ve either done none or one movie. and I think, I think Tin Can is infusing more curiosity in me as to what it would be like if we were a little bit, you know, even more screen free.
And those trips have gone great. Some of that might be our kids’ age. They’re a little bit older and a little easier for us to communicate with. but we’re trying to tell ‘em, like, it’s important for you to understand that sometimes you’re just gonna sit in a car seat and stare out the window you don’t need to be entertained the whole freaking time.
and you know, I think most parents would say that if you’re firm and consistent, usually you’ll be surprised by how okay they are. And by the way, there were like centuries of people that did this, that didn’t have a, a screen to entertain them. They had to figure something out. They went and like threw a rock outside.
TinCan, we call it the landline reinvented for friends. the idea is to bring back a very simple voice to voice connection mechanism. we have two different products. We’ve got a, one called the Flashback that’s this fun retro throwback.
It looks just like the phone you had when you were a kid. And then we have our own fully custom tin can. That’s kind of a fun form factor, but ultimately it is a, feels a lot like a home phone, that pairs of the Parent Companion app and just allows you, set up your kids so they can call specific people that you want them to be able to call, whether it’s an external cell phone like grandma or your cell phone or nine one one or another kid who has a tin can, for what we call a can to can call.
tin, can you sort of have to go all the way back to my childhood to really understand it? I certainly didn’t know it then that I would start TinCan now. but There’s a couple of things that I would share. one, I was an incredibly social being.
So I was the landline kid. It is the way that I communicated. It was my first social network. when I was bored, my mom would say, go find a friend to play with.
Fast forward, to present day. My kids are now 10, eight and four. I have a daughter, who’s my oldest, and then I have two boys.
and I have felt a lot of angst and guilt over how, little autonomy they have over who they invest in, who they talk to, who they connect with. That’s friends, but also grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. All the rest. we’re very much on the, keep ’em away from a full tablet or full cell phone for as long as we can.
[00:35:04] Adam Fishman: A lot of dads seemed to have landed on the same conclusion. Kids watch what you do more than what you say.
that idea that you’re not afraid of introducing them to technology is counter to what I hear a lot of parents, especially parents in tech,
And so I’m curious, what your approach is to it and like why. You’re so bullish on it.
[00:35:27] Olav Sindre Kriken: I think there’s different ways of, of, of doing it, but for my sake, it’s. We came over here and, nobody had a cell phone, uh, or an iPhone or whatever, nobody had their own computers and stuff. And that’s, that’s fine. It’s not, that’s not the thing. The thing is like, I’m not afraid of teaching my kids how to use AI or letting them watch YouTube on my phone or on an iPad now.
And then of course we have the, the screen time like my youngest, she uses YouTube kids, not YouTube, like, yeah, whatever.
[00:35:56] Adam Fishman: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:57] Olav Sindre Kriken: have full control on what they, what they do watch and how they consume content. But using technology, I think it’s amazing. think that that’s just gonna stimulate their brains to what’s possible.
And, and I do understand the people that say like, oh, I want my daughter to draw, I want my daughter to do this and that, or my, my son to do whatever I. my daughter is exceptionally drawing.
She’s 12 years old. I’ve introduced her to technology since she was four or five. She ends up sitting in her room building masks. She’s drawings for her mother’s 40th birthday. She, she painted this amazing picture, and I have done nothing to, to do that. But she started seeing YouTube videos on how to, how to draw, to paint. She made a card. I, I post to my wife at, uh, Taj Mahal in India, like, 20 years ago. So we have this picture of, uh, me doing that. for our, uh, anniversary, she built Taj Mahal in like card boxes.
I never just said like, you’re not getting an iPad. You’re not gonna get your, you’re not using a cell phone to watch YouTube. You’re not. But we discuss what we’re seeing.
[00:37:07] Adam Fishman: Mm.
[00:37:08] Olav Sindre Kriken: So I don’t want them to like, scroll on TikTok seeing shorts. She’s not, she doesn’t have TikTok. So I think just there’s a difference between what platforms you, make available for them and what you do with technology.
And technology I think is amazing.
[00:37:23] Adam Fishman: There were also so many frameworks, not necessarily as rigid rules, but more like guardrail.
Things you can come back to when you’re tired, when you’re overwhelmed, when you don’t have the perfect response in the moment.
[00:37:37] James Currier: a woman taught us this up in Mill Valley when we lived there briefly. She had a parenting seminar and this was the big takeaway. And then I think there was a book that my wife brought back to the house, which talked about this because when we had our first kids, we thought, well, the kids are gonna be good and when they do something wrong, we correct them.
And that’s how they learn how to continue to do good and not do the bad. But in fact, it’s not the case. I think that kids will just do whatever and. It’s up to you to help them figure out what is more beneficial to them and to you than, than not. So all I would do is reprimand the kids until they were about three and the babies were one.
And that’s when we realized, oh, no, no, no. You have to notice the things that they’re doing that you like. And say, oh, I really like it when you do that. Or, you know, it’s so nice when you sit quietly in my lap and I get to read this book to you. Like even point that out.
and now when I drive the car, the boys all say, thanks for driving dad at the end of every ride.
Because instead of just assuming that dad’s gonna do the good thing or the right thing or the thing that helps the family say, oh, you just helped the family out by driving us here and paying attention while we were talking or listening to music. Thank you for doing that.
And so you start to actually positively reinforce the behaviors you want.
Not by telling them good job or anything, but just like, thank you for doing that. Or, oh, I appreciate you did that, or I noticed how you did that. Uh, I noticed how you gave your brother that toy. That was, that was really nice to see, you know, in specific.
And if you do that seven times, then one time you can say, Hey.
You know, when you took that toy away from your brother, that’s not really gonna make him happy. And in the long run, it’s not gonna make you happy either, is it? Do you see how that works?
and then you can get into the more negative behaviors and, and try to steer them away from those again, with specifics.
but if you don’t compliment them seven times, the one time you, you go at them, they’re just gonna be like, oh, this guy’s always just correcting me. their listening will, will tune off.
and as they get into teenage years, I think it’s harder for parents not to just be nagging because they see so many behaviors as they approach adulthood.
The parents can see so many, behaviors that they don’t like, and the kids just tune out because the parents just nag all the time, and they, they lose that seven to one ratio and, and then it goes badly.
[00:39:51] Adam Fishman: clear communication, consistent boundaries, overflowing affection. Can you tell me about that Trifecta?
[00:40:00] Dave Simnick: I think it can be truncated into an even shorter phrase, and then as direct, but kind.
One of the things is like, look, children, especially like elementary, you know, middle school essentially, they will test your boundaries, being firm on those boundaries is a good thing, right? Like, it, it provides security and safety and, consistency for children. but they should know they’re loved about a hundred percent.
They should know they’re loved.
you should fill them with that empowerment so that they are fearless and exploring and they wanna learn and they’re willing to take risks. and they know their values. clear and communication, we’ve already started saying, the Turkish word for no is higher.
Noah’s probably gonna speak pretty late because like he’s hearing three constant languages in the household and he’s just like, you want me to speak Spanish, English, Turkish? What do you want? But it is really interesting ’cause like he knows different things in different languages.
he knows when like, doing something wrong, and he is a year and a month almost, right? Like, like we, when he runs off towards, a drawer and he starts climbing up the drawer and we’re like, that’s really dangerous. We’ll say like higher. and which is ironic that I just use that because, you know, you might think it’s actually
like, let’s climb higher,
but he Yeah, right.
[00:41:17] Adam Fishman: He’s like,
I’m,
[00:41:19] Dave Simnick: is not a great example. Um, but, but honestly like he, he knows that like, at that tone and inflection, he’s just like, oh crap, I can’t do this. And he’ll stop. And like, I think that’s where it’s just like, oh wow, cool. But then the thing is, is in terms of like love languages, like physical touch.
He is doomed because he has just been cuddled beyond belief. and with, you know, so many people in the house, like consistently holding him and, and squeezing him and loving him. Uh, we also have a really firm rule of no screens.
[00:41:51] Michael Leibovich: so change the channel. I mean, in some ways it’s like classic misdirection, you know, like, I think probably all toddlers, like, she can get fixated on something, you know, sometimes she’s just in an emotion, you know, she’s frustrated and just won’t sort of like click outta that. changing the channel we is just like the shorthand for us of like, Try to get her onto a different like wave, you know? And so I think the classic times are like, you know, when she’s like, I don’t wanna take a bath, and she’s having a meltdown, and it’s like, okay, what can we do?
there’s no reasoning in explaining like, well, you know, actually you’re getting a lot of oil built up in your hair and it’s time to clean. You know, it’s just like, for me, an example of change, the channel is like, asking her a question.
Usually that sort of works. Like, do you want bubbles in the bath? And then she’s like, yeah, I want bubbles in the bath. and so it’s just like asking, usually they’re, they are in the form of a, you know, asking a question that just kind of gets her to stop and like, reframe
and.
[00:42:53] Oji Udezue: I believe that children are a universe in themselves, like a, a bubble of potential. And I don’t want to use mystical words. So a bubble of potential, if you wanna be mystical, say a bubble of destiny is just embryonic, their purpose is bigger than your parentage. you don’t own it. It’s bigger than you. Your job is to bring bring it to fruition, right? And that’s what a shepherd is. A shepherd leads the flock, and in the context of parenting, it’s not to the slaughter eventually, but it is to lead to a destination you don’t know. They don’t know. And so that uncertainty should also cause caution, but also respect. And this is why you respect your children, not because they are old, but because you respect what they will become.
[00:43:45] Olav Sindre Kriken: you don’t own your kids,
You’re borrowing them, and that you don’t own their thoughts. They need to get their own thoughts and all. It is a philosophy about like. Building the kids for tomorrow, and it might be a tomorrow that you can’t join.
[00:44:01] Adam Fishman: On paper, many of these may sound almost obvious. In practice, they’re incredibly hard, and that’s kind of the point. These aren’t hacks, they’re repetitions, simple, hard, and worth practicing.
For first time dads, there was a lot of humility, a lot of realizing that whatever picture you had in your head of the kind of dad you were going to be probably wasn’t complete yet. I also got to celebrate a first time dad in my own life, my 100th episode with my brother.
[00:44:31] Dan Fishman: while I am a dad and a parent, I still don’t identify with that identity. Maybe it’s an acquired taste,
maybe there are ways to really enjoy and succeed in parenting without going full Dad.
only time will tell.
[00:44:44] Adam Fishman: This idea that becoming a dad isn’t a switch, you flip.
It’s something you grow into
[00:44:49] Brian Holt: an evergreen thought of every father is like, am I doing enough? Am I doing the right things? we try and like remind him constantly that, that, you know, mommy is carrying a baby, that the baby’s gonna come soon. That all of a sudden you’re gonna have like, divided attention.
‘cause he is, he is an only child so far. He has had 100% of two parents’ attention, plus all the people around him that love him, right. he’s a mama’s boy. He loves his mom. So I think that’s gonna be super difficult for him that like. He’s not gonna be able to go to bed with mommy most nights.
He’s not gonna be able to have her attention. He’s gonna get more daddy’s attention, which like, you know, daddy’s attention is cool, but it’s not mommy attention. Right. There’s, there is, there’s a pecking order here and I know where I stand, It’s like mom and then me and the dog are about even, right.
Which is fine. Right? I accept that. we’re just trying to piece by piece, you know, reinforce, this is what’s happening. It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. And so he, he understands somewhat that like a baby is about to be, he understands what a baby is that it’s going to be here.
And then just recognizing that all of our planning is gonna go to total shit. And it’s all gonna happen all at once and we’re, we’re just gonna panic and deal with it. Right. Which is just kind of our, our, our ML at this point.
[00:45:55] Mike Yan: if you think about being a trainer, do you want to do like a whiplash type of situation where you just put so much pressure and like try to craft those diamonds while you break, nine out of 10 people and then maybe like you get one diamond out of it, but that diamond is also gonna be, have it. internal conflicts and all the things that are gonna be allowing for that talent to be exposed. But then, my philosophy is a bit different.
I don’t think that you want, again, speaking for myself, do not want kid to be an unhappy achiever.
so you want the person to grow into their potential and to grow into their talents, you want that to happen in a way that, is coming from a place of, care.
[00:46:45] Adam Fishman: and just when you think you figured it out, you realize there isn’t a fixed playbook. Every kid is different, and every phase of dad hood asks for something new from you. One conversation this season was a little different than most my discussion with Jeff Lingo on the college admissions process and finding your dream school as a family.
[00:47:05] Jeff Selingo: Dream to me is a slightly different, in this case There’s not a single school, there’s not even a single category of schools. It doesn’t mean it’s like the Ivy League or the SEC I want to go to a Big 10 school. That’s my dream. It’s more about. your fit finding your right fit. Where are places where you’re gonna learn for how you like to learn, where you’re going to thrive, where you’re gonna find your people? Like that to me is how you define a dream school. It’s less about prestige, it’s less about where everyone else is going, and it’s more about finding that right fit for what you need and being comfortable with that.
[00:47:43] Adam Fishman: That idea applied way beyond college because at the end of the day, this isn’t really about schools, it’s about letting our kids own their journey.
[00:47:52] Jeff Selingo: I feel like we have put so much focus on the job and the payment that comes after college because college has become so expensive that it then results in students deciding on a major from high school that they’re not really sure of.
But, oh, it must pay. I’m gonna go into finance ‘cause it pays a lot of money. I’m gonna major in engineering. I’m okay at it. I don’t love it, but it pays a lot of money. And then they get there. They may not even like it, but they kind of grind it out and then they get into a career that they don’t love as a result. what I hope in all of this is that we would have more exploration and that is the part where if college is all about the job, I get it. I understand why. I feel like it diminishes the parts of college. that Help students develop into full, you know, blown human beings, help them discover new ideas, help them discover new careers. and that part I think is, is missing when we focus on the job.
parents are there as a guide, but I remind parents this is not their college search. They definitely have to set up guide rails. they have to nudge a little bit. Uh, the guide rails are important obviously for finances. They have to nudge to make sure students are making their deadline. they have to be there to discuss. And question, uh, to get a sense of what their child is thinking, and perhaps give them advice. But there’s a fine line between advice and telling them what to do, and I think that’s the part that parents. Sometimes miss or oftentimes miss, where they feel like, well, I didn’t spend all this time, money, and effort on raising you for you to go to this college that my friends won’t be impressed with when I tell them where you’re going to college. And, and that is the main reason I wrote Dream School, is to try to give parents permission to think more broadly about what. Makes for a good college because if we don’t do that, we are gonna be kind of stuck in this doom loop of parents feeling like they failed because their kids are not going to Stanford or Yale or you know, whatever.
[00:50:09] Adam Fishman: Almost everything we talked about this season came back to partnership. Not just parenting together, but actually communicating.
[00:50:17] Matt Martin: it’s really important in any relationship to have clear communication, but also to acknowledge that people can’t read your mind. I’m bad at this at times, and I think that especially in the early months of having a kid, you’re most prone to this ‘cause what’s going on?
You’re tired, you’re not sleeping, you’re kind of stressed out. You know, it’s a new view on your relationship with your spouse that you’ve never had before. and as you noted, the division of labor is inherently unequal. And so like, you’re trying to help out where you can. I have personally gotten into bad habits of, just assuming that the other person knows what I want or assuming that they’re gonna communicate.
I do think it’s really, really important through the arc of the whole relationship, but especially when people are tired, is just to like, take a beat and communicate how you’re feeling. Communicate what the ask is, and also give your spouse some leeway that they’re probably making the same mistakes as like they’re assuming things, you know, maybe they’re getting short with you, they’re probably sleeping less than you are if you’re the dad.
So like, you can’t assume that people know what you want.
[00:51:22] Jeff Okita: we know that we need to stay in really good communication with us to make sure that we cover all the things that we need to do. So we do have it scheduled.
We have like a shared Google calendar. We have some timeframes where we can, map out the week. We have monthly check-ins, on the calendar as well. It ends up being a lot more fluid than that, that we have that time reserved. But it just comes naturally that we know that as it comes to Sunday evening and we have a really busy week that we touch base to figure out like, what’s going on in your world?
What’s going on in mine? Are there any expected, time blocks that one of us needs to cover even? Like, how are we feeling? And like if one of us needs a bit more of a break, figuring out how we can carry the load. and so I think it’s really important to stay in touch with your partner when everything is busy.
[00:52:10] Adam Fishman: Good communication. Didn’t solve everything, but it made the hard part survivable.
And finally, community, which is a big reason this show exists. The
[00:52:20] Colin Anawaty: One thing I think a lot of men historically have struggled with, is just having these conversations amongst friends. Often it’s scoff or how’s work going?
a saying that I think really resonates is the longest. Distance a man will journey in his life is the 18 inches between his head and his heart. and so we have a habit of just cramming those feelings down, and hopefully not in an unhealthy way, but we don’t want them to, to blow up, explode, or, create other, you know, real stressors on your life.
And so whether it’s a formal group, whether reading some books, you can self-organize a group of people in your network and just have more vulnerable conversations, and I think that’s a great step forward.
[00:53:03] Michael Leibovich: so we started like a group text thread basically. And so it’s like a text thread of parents. that was initially started for like our benefit, but now it’s sort of like everybody’s kind of sharing and, anytime something happens that we don’t really know what to do about, we just kind of reach out to that thread.
And what’s great is it’s not like a homogenous group. Like we have a few parents on there that, kind of follow the attachment parenting kind of style, others that don’t, you know. So it’s, it’s also sort of nice to get, even if it’s three or four differing opinions, but from 10 people, you know, or respect or admire, like, it’s just made such a difference.
It’s made our lives so much easier to, to navigate kind of all, all of these questions, you know, that you really don’t know the answer to.
[00:53:50] Adam Fishman: purpose of this show. Was to show all the dads that we’re all out here, just figuring it out in real time and sometimes just hearing someone else say, yeah, I’ve been there too, is enough to keep going. If this season taught me anything, it’s that there’s no one right way to be a dad.
It’s just about showing up, screwing it up, talking about it, learning, and doing it all over again tomorrow. Thanks for listening to this season. Thanks to every guest who showed up, honestly. And if you’re in the middle of a product, launch, a toddler meltdown, or both at the same time, you’re not alone. Come on the show and let’s talk about it.
Here’s to a terrific start, to 2026. I’ll see you on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen or watch your podcasts.