Welcome to the Red that show today. My guest is Advil Ginsberg. He's a managing partner of Alexa, accelerated here in Seattle. He's also part of the Founder's Court, where he is a VC, and he's a co founder of Simply Measure of Yellow, and I will talk about counting of simply measured what it's like to be in your dead. What it's like to be a dad will work in a high stress work environment and is always with founders. We'll talk a little bit about startup life and everything in between. Leslie, who shares some tips on traveling with the little ones. Also, if you like to ask me or avielle any questions or would like a veal to come back to talk in more detail about something you hear in this episode, please let me know by e mailing to editor at Red that show that come All right, let's jump right in.

You went on the interesting path. He went from a software engineer. Thio go powder of simply measured than if you see. And now a manager. The Lexx accelerator. But Dex stars. Is that right?

Yep, it's a little bit of a journey of the past decade.

I mean, it's pretty awesome. So can you tell us a little bit about it? And how that prepare you to be where you are now?

Uh, sure. I mean, really, the way that everything kind of started for me was almost I mean, I don't want to call it random, but it sort of was random. Where I I decided I was either gonna move to Seattle or San Francisco a little bit after I graduated college, when I knew that the startup that I was building with one of my friends from high school wasn't going to work and I wasn't going to work, I mean, wasn't even really going to start because we have no idea what we were doing. And ego's way too large for for our capabilities. So decided I wanted to go somewhere to actually learn what is was building start up. What is it building software actually all about? So I moved. I decided to Seattle because I had a friend out here and it was just easier transition and shockingly, actually didn't know anyone in San Francisco.

And my third day in Seattle was the first Seattle startup weekend this is back when started, Weaken was just getting started. This had to be, you know, the 1st 5 that was ever thrown and could have actually been the second or third. And this is also back when it was not like the start of beacons are today where you break up on the small teams. It was that everyone works on one company together, which is preposterous is 150 people, you know, we're working together. On what idea? And the way that we actually broken toe into roles was they ask you to raise your hand. If you want to be the head of engineering, raise your hand If you want to be a blob of law, I think up to the point of saying, raise your hand if you want to be the head of design.

Nobody raised their hand. I thought to myself, Okay, like I'm bettering software from past decade. I've done some web design work. My father is an artist. I don't suck at this, but I have no idea what I'm doing. But no one else is raising their hand. And actually, I'm just really here to network. So what The hell. So I raised my am, and suddenly then I was thrust into conversations with people who were super well connected while established within that a Seattle ecosystem. And then come the next week, I had a job offer to work at.

Aperture is a software engineer on. That was back when I was just, I think, five or six of us in a makeshift office space, and that company went on to read his venture and have a really successful exit. So I started accidentally, found myself at the beginning of a small storm that was on kind of the exact journey that I wanted to go myself. So the amount of learnings and connections and I got in and out was was kind of kind of preposterous. And when it came thio me wanting to say Okay, now it's finally time for me to go out on my own and start my own company. I had established relationships with the investors in the company who wanted to back me a little loan story demon and I, who is my original co founder for simply measured. We both got asked to be ers in your drain into Explorer. The social space. I ended up turning that down to state the company a little bit longer, but it was a lot of those conversations and that work that ended up leading us to found simply measured,

which, interestingly is well was founded by Founders Coop, where I'm now a partner but found a scope was also investing in aperture, which is how I got to know founders Cobb. So it's just such a ridiculously small world, but just sort of being open to sure I'll do that. Sure, I'll go to this. I'll raise my hand. I'll figure this out led me to being in the right place at the right time, which gave me the learnings and connections I need to found simply measured. And it is time went on after found in their company. I just I really love that really stage so much so I have been involved in helping do text our selection since 2010. Mentoring in the program, working a lot to start ups, just have always gravitated towards that 0 to 20 people at the part where you don't quite a product market fitter.

If you do, you don't know what to do with it. You know, the whole journey is ahead. Of even I found is simply surgery went on. That's also where I'm I'm the best simply measured Group passed under for people. I was a fish out of water trying to be a a manager. And that's not necessarily where I wanted to focus my time in growth. So I started helping out a lot more in the texture side, helping Founders Coop with diligence and sort of one day kind of woke up and realized that even though I didn't have the title and pretty much was eventual partner in the fund Ondas, things began to. So you kind of move forward, simply measured with mean on any your ship. Roll Night started moving more and more into that world. And then, sure,

you'll want to dig in a little bit towards simply measured acquisition. Some of those things which super related to this, because it was about that time that I had my kid. My son is 15 months old, so So I kind of had had my kid and then went through this massive transition where I had my feet in multiple worlds and then now I have them, both of them firmly in the the investor in the D C world. So that's that's a quick, quick run through the past 10 years.

Well, that's pretty amazing. And all that came out on the way out of a three day started weekend. Mark and the team really don't get enough credit for that.

Well, actually, hilariously, that was when Andrew I was reading it and Mark and Clint were at that start of weekend with me. Clinton actually became my best, my first best friend in Seattle, and I introduced them to Andrew Hide and worked with them, negotiating the purchase of it from him. So, young man, this is like, This is the really early days. I was in the middle of all that,

and it's only been a few years scheme of things. It's fascinating. What do you think you enjoy the most? Was the co founding face before it got past 20 people,

you know, like it actually probably was the 10 to 20. Like the early stages where you know, it's just you. You're always, especially if you feel like you're on to something frustrated because you're not actually able to like, create the world that you know that needs to exist. You don't There's not enough time in the day you don't have enough resource is. And that, like 10 to 20 was when there still wasn't structure. People could still really be driven and take take things in their own hands. You don't have to worry about management and process. But finally had enough resource is, like, really tackle the problem and see like, Are we capable of doing this? And can we really prove out that there is a market for a product like that?

That that days, which is like, I tend to break down start ups and, you know, a TTE? First there's there's 10 this exist, and then there's well, should this exist And then Okay, well, how does this exist? And I kind of like the, uh, you know, that little thing is there,

out of all the ladies of the time, why was it simply measured? That really drove you,

uh, you know, this is this is embarrassing, because I started the company and in the way that I never encouraged anyone else to do it. We actually founded The company is untitled startup raised our 1st 150 K without an idea. The plan was that we were going to tackle the PR and marketing space doing something related to social and that the first product we were gonna build was a sort of hybrid forum, the voting platform, so that we could get so we could largely, like crowdsource and easily get public opinion on what we should build. And that was what we actually raised money for. And, you know, we spent all this time released it and the built in audience through putting up daily videos. I mean, we literally had thousands of people following us, but that idea was pretty awful. All the ideas were getting were useless,

like it was like, What? What? What are we doing here? And then, uh, not six months into that experiment, Damon and I said, You know, we were good friends. We've tacked on tons of projects together, but we've never actually built to ship something and to end together. So why don't we just do our little mini startup weekend, lock ourselves in your house and from start to finish, build a product and just just do it like okay on Dhe. Nobody's really coming to our platform yet.

So why don't we just ask on Twitter what we should build? And we did that. We started getting a bunch of responses. Damon was copying and pasting those things into a Google doc, and then it hit him. He's like, Whoa, you know, Twitter just released this new streaming 80. I think we could just build something that streams the tweets that were copying and pasting into the spreadsheet into, uh, Google Doc. So basically, just automate the process that we're doing That kind of looked at each other and laughed and said, Oh, yeah,

yeah. Fuck, yeah, we're doing that, um, and we built the whole prototype in the weekend, and the prototype actually included payments. That was a big thing for us. And we crashed really, really hard Sunday, uh, night woke up like and launched it and woke up like seven. Am I woke up first, and there's like, e mails saying, uh,

you know, it's not working. What the hell? I paid good money for this. And, well, Damon up like, Oh, my God, people are paying for what we built. And also it doesn't work, but maybe we're actually onto something. And what's really funny is the agreement that we made when we took the 150 came with Andy Sachs, who led the round for funds. Cough was that we would not to build a social media monitoring application. That was the agreement.

He believed that that space was actually already won and figured out so we could do anything in social except a social media monitoring out. And we built one, and immediately people started to pay for it. And within a couple of weeks we found that things were breaking left and right like, Why is this happening? Well, turns out that the person is Evelyn who designed with PR for BlackBerry was using. It was we were actually breaking Google sheets. I mean, it was just like a wild, wild experience where we just got pulled into this world and realized that we have the technology, technical expertise and just started listening to our customers. And over time we realized that it wasn't just this low end product that people wanted. They actually wanted an enterprise grade solution to help, um, measure and evolve their social strategies.

And it was about a year into that we had brought out of on as our third co founder and became CEO, that there really was this large enterprise opportunity. And hilariously part of where we realized that opportunity existed was that we would start getting phone calls from procurement department saying, Why is there this item for ah, $500 charge to untitled startup? What is this shit s? We realized we kind of needed toe update our branding and everything and go in that direction. So again, like this was not really the properly and started methodology. This was not founders who were like super passionate about specific problem installing. This is just people who loved working together, loves tinkering with socially p eyes. And we just wanted an excuse to get to make this our full time job both and working with each other and do the things we love. So we follow the money and that's not simply measured. Came to be.

That's a fascinating story. And I think you just touched in a couple of really great points. I heard before multiple really famous startup, starting out of startup, weekend like mentality where founders were just exploring stuff just puts lending pages out there eventually hits hit gold, but it's kind of funny that you're not advising people to do this, even though it worked for you. All right,

well, here's the thing Is that if if if you're starting a way that we started like, you're not actually ready to raise capital like we only took in 150 k and we were we were ourselves just paying ourselves $36,000 a year each. So it was really just to get us tow, be able to sustain and live. But, you know, we weren't really ready to do it. It wasn't until, like, a year in, when we really realized what we were doing with simply measuring that, I think way were on the venture track. E think people could put themselves in a bad position to say, You have this idea. I think this is gonna work and then raise way too much money and suddenly realize that they've already committed towards playing a game before they know the rules, and that's that's a mistake,

Andi. Other thing, too, is like we were lucky that we figured it out within six months could have in 18 months a good many years. Um, you know, we were I like to see people a little bit further along when I invest in them on. I want to support them when they're in the stage that we were. But, you know, you really can get over your skis and suddenly start thinking like, Oh, God, the results money we have to hire. We have to hit this. We have to get customers.

We have to do it. And we were just able to work in our own pace, and I think that's that's something that's that's really important. That gets for gotten a lot these days is you think that you have to look the same way as everyone else. And the reality is, when you do start to take adventure specifically, you know, I do mean like institutional capital rather than angel money. It starts to put you on a specific trajectory. Then you have to look a specific way. And until you're ready to do that, you can make a mistake leaving too early,

right? It's important to realize what venture monies for that. It's kind of just a tool that will help you grow, help you discover things you need to discover, right? But But then I love it because that means everyone who wants to start a startup right now If they just found a smart friend or a couple and buckle down for a few days in their house, they could start the next implemented during

the next year. You have The reality is that no matter where you are and what you're doing, you maybe three days away from starting simply measured

simply. Measure is extremely fitting name for this, too. All right, well, let's get away from stars for a little bit, but we'll circle back. I mean, I love startups, but now that you were dad, you know, how is it being 15 months?

I mean, exhausting. My voice usually doesn't sound this way. Last night was actually a pretty good night. I think I got four hours of sleep straight, which is like, almost a personal best. But it's an incredible, incredible experience that I think the weirdest part about it is that everything that everyone has said it was going to be like was empirically correct, but so different than what I imagined. Like you know this is gonna happen. You're gonna feel this way. This is gonna happen. But it wasn't until I actually experienced had the kid and experienced these things myself that I got it on day one of the first times in my life that have actually experienced. Don't think that because I tend to think that, you know I can I can learn from other people's experiences I can read. I can internalize that I could make decisions off of it.

Having a kid was the first time I've experienced that, just simply not being true. And it's only because of personal experience that I could do that. I don't want to go back into the start of world, but it actually gave me a really interesting insight. Working the founder is like one of the biggest mistakes that former founders to go into the sea make is that they imagine themselves in the other person's shoes, making decisions that same way, feeling the same way. Um, and this experience, along with some of the initial investments I made, gave me a lot more, a lot more of a realization that all of our experiences are unique in the way that we internalize it and deal with the unique eso being smarter about that when I invest in companies and just also realizing everyone is on their own journey and has their own shit going on in their personal life and not not to discount that? Um

no, that absolutely made sense. But it was your own kid. You could be a dead, and you can directly influence it with the company. You're still kind of an advisor, right? That must be hard. Now that you know what it's like to be a

dad. I mean, totally. My son's only 15 months. So you know, it's actually only that in the past several months that we've really been able to communicate with each other, which has just been amazing. It's still mostly non verbal, But like, you know, I can say, Do you want to do this? What you want to do? We can give me direction. You could tell me what what he wants. I can I can tell him. You know what I'd like him to dio released from the first link nine months arguably 12.

There is an illusion that, like actually like being a dad were apparent is like being a boss or a leader. I mean, it actually is a lot more like the adviser in some ways because he's got his own agenda. He's got his own needs, and, uh, you know, I can't just say stop crying or wait five minutes. The food will be ready. That's not quite how it works. I need to teach you how to connect with them on a different level.

I know you're right, because stop anything. I mean, it really doesn't end there. You know? My oldest is three year old now, and you can't really tell her to stop crying. Sometimes you really want to, because if it happens, you know, because you're like, you don't want it to hurt like you're like, stop crying. But you look great. I mean, but she can't process that right. She's not an adult.

Yeah, I really think that, like, you know, there's some amazing lessons, like for having a kid that you never go back into the world war on managing a large organization. I'll realized what we were like. Things that I don't have control over. Like, you know, it's it's funny, like every day I dropped some new parallel towards like, Oh, wow, that situation I had three years ago is really related to what I'm dealing with right now.

You know, I was reading Sarah Lacey's book about a lot of things, but it was a parenting. And she mentioned that in the workplace you can always spot with the parents are because whenever everything goes to shifts, parents really just calmly go through and do their thing because they're so used to the fact that they don't have any control. It's just you totally good everywhere. Yeah, yeah, but do you have any favorite memories so far? 50 months is a lot of months.

The first time that he liked belly laughs, that I got that that, like, saw that cure joy of being alive, that I had forgot me even existed. Like, I don't think I've experienced that in decades on DDE that he was his honest changing table and just touched my head. And he just lost it like violence, belly laughing. What the hell is happening? And I put my head back down and he did it again and we were like caught in like an infinite loop for 30 minutes with him doing this infectious belly laugh. We gotta put him down to naff like I don't want to stop this. Let's do this until he is no longer laughing like that. After 30 minutes, we had to, like, actually give up because he would not stop doing it.

But you know, like so much of the first many months of having a kid, our kid being upset. I like the jokes, you know, the Paul Graham like, Is your starting a default dead or default alive, Like in the early days of the baby? The baby is not default alive, and there's there's this magical moment. We're like it wants to live more than it is like on a path towards death. Such as, like doesn't eat every two hours. If you're not paying attention, this happens, you know you can their sins.

There's all these things that are just totally nuts. But then there's this moment of of your baby now wants to live in that belly laugh of just like I'm here and I actually love this. This is so amazing. Thank you for making me. I swear I'm not always, like, really upset. Miserable. That I'm always in some state of twofold, not full in a uncomfortable growing in pain. That was just such a magical experience. I was like, Okay, I get this. This is this is this is so rewarding. I love it.

It's amazing because, you know, not many dads can save us a lot. Do. But a lot of dads also kind of stay far away from the kids and let the mom stay care of the babies. So the fact that you just so excited about this is amazing.

I mean, you know that to be to be honest, though, it took a long time to get to that, like the first several months where we're really hard. Um, you know, I never I never actually ended up going in to get an actual diagnosis, but I've had depression passed and very confident that the 1st 6 months actually ended up with, uh, sort of the male version of postpartum, which is kind of embarrassing to admit because it's, you know, you don't have the same chemical reaction to try and justify it. But the 1st 6 months were like, really, really hard.

I ended up taking pretty much no time off. I had I had a meeting with a potential acquirer for simply measured three days after my baby was born. Um, you know, it was it was, like, rough. I was working my ass off and lots of other things. That deal is so, you know, for me in the early part, we have this, like, baby that does nothing but, like, it's sort of like the 1st 6 months of little vampires.

And then you have all this, like, complicated stuff going on at work, you tons of high stress situations. Like I was I was like, not in a good place where I was, like, frustrated at work for keeping me away from the baby. And I was frustrated the baby for keeping me away from performance at work. And I'm frustrated at my leg wife when she needed me to take care of stuff like that for six months were pretty damn ugly. So in that moment when stuff kind of collect, there was really important for me because it was it was like, not only can I do this, but also, like, I actually enjoy this. And don't feel like this is taking away from my life but is actually adding to it.

I'm so glad that you saying this not because you went through depression, but because so many people do. But they don't talk about it that everybody just pretends that once the baby comes around, everything is happy and lovely. And then two years later, people end up divorcing.

So, yeah, I mean, my whole relationship with my partner fundamentally changed. It was like You have your existing rules of engagement and then you get into a pattern, and then your relationship becomes built around that pattern. That whole thing gets thrown out the window and it's almost like you have to go through the process of like of like, Okay, who are you now? Who are we in this context? Do we still work together? Do we still like each other? Do we still get along? But there's all these other parts of your life that remain the same. Like you still have that same work environment because you kind of like Taylor, your home life, your personal relationships around a lot of these other thing,

especially in a start up culture, were like the order of operations for me then would like When I have the baby was number one. Priority is is my is my company. Like, is my start up like I wrecked my long term relationship when I found it simply measured? Because that is what I did. You're encouraged. Its founders do that. So it was that and then it was kind of my long term success and being able to establish myself as someone who is, like, well known is successful in therefore support my family and then sort of family number three. Because the idea is like, you go out, you conquer, and then you use those things to support your family. And after I have the baby,

it was like, Whoa, holy shit! Babies number one. And then there is no number two. And then number three is my wife because she takes care of the baby. And, like, suddenly, the whole prioritization of all that was completely fucking out the window. Except nothing else has changed. You still show up to your job. You're still in the same meetings. You're still doing all these same things. But least for me, everything about Mike organization changed him like that was a disaster. for me.

How did you eventually get yourself out of it?

I have really good people around the people inside of the company who recognized and any of the investors to realize that I was, like, not really in a good place. So, you know, they kind of gave me a path towards being able to be in a rule that was not critical, path their hands on and also be able to kind of explore, um, you know, taking on the textures, roll, doing some other stuff that help me balance my life better and also, you know, made me made me happy and made me feel feel like I was I have, like, a future and that the whole world wasn't caving it on. So it was just having often people like,

specifically, simply measured CEO of the time. Michael was Luke, who was just, like, amazing partner and supporter of your like, even though you knew that, um, you know me, spending more time at home and spending more time on in this case, it was like techstars and another world was gonna come at a cost thio him needing to spend, you know, deal with some things on his own that we previously had done as a team and me spending last time involved. It's simply measured, like he he just he knew it's what I needed, and it was just amazingly supportive.

And so were my co founders and the whole bunch of key employees. So, you know, really, just being able to not be caught in, you know, high stress start up world in a rule that I wasn't really finding success that was having the support to do. That was incredible. I mean, there's there's one thing we're just like, you know, you found it, started up and then you sort of do it indefinitely. And your job is the founder is to always do whatever needs to be done. But, like I definitely after having the kid reached the point where,

um, you know, we all talk about like after you have kids, you kind of you can start really failing and self care. Unlike as a startup founder, you're just by definition probably terrible that, you know it's awful is this is There tends to be a pretty strong correlation between, like, people who use companies perform well, having really bad work. Life balance is certainly one of those people. Um, so, you know, it was just like after the baby. It just got so bad that I was like, Wow, I probably should have made some course corrections many years ago, but now now it's urgent.

So what do you think? People who are running startups or even not even start ups who are in a high stress work environment and going to have kids could do in order to prepare themselves short of quitting their job, you know,

I mean, I think a lot of it is like, really making sure that you're on the same page with your partner in that you have the ability to, you know, to trade off and support each other. And then also, you know, if you have family who can do that as well because you really just don't know what's gonna happen, how it's how it's gonna go. Um, I think the other thing is is you know, as you get older, you get better at figuring out how to work works murder, so you don't have to work as many hours. You're just much more thoughtful about how you work and more productive in that time on. I really think that developing that muscle before you have the kid eyes a really important thing. And I'd say the other is that you start to recognize it.

For the 1st 6 months, you're gonna be in reactive mode, like if you're trying to learn a new skill at work. I learned a new muscle. It's like lead an initiative. You're not going to be doing it justice, especially for the 1st 6 months, because you're trying to readjust your own life and figure out who you are. So I think being having a good support network and being realistic about what you're going to be able to accomplish and then also practicing the ways that you're going to need toe work rather than suddenly being blindsided by the fact that you have all these other priorities. There's something I would encourage everyone to do, and I definitely have the support network. But I was I was probably missing the other two in ways I should have had.

Don't make sense, and I'm so glad you said it about, you know, learning to be more efficient because I feel like in silicon Valley in general, there's this notion that that's complete b s and that you just need to work for 24 hours a day in order to be successful, which I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't work as hard as you can. But I think it's like it's a legitimate thing that you can just really be very good at what you d'oh and therefore save you some time that you can then bring Thio.

There was there's one way and again like this doesn't apply for all roles. But, you know, I people ask me like, What do you like? What do you do for a living like you're not reading software anymore? Like, what is the job of like, uh, a master? What is this thing? Even like people question when they was like this naive approach of like individual contributors like my manager does nothing like, there's this whole type of job. What do you do for a living? What you actually do is you make decisions and you help other people make decisions, and the reality red is like How you could be good at that is by having the capacity to make a lot of decisions or help people make a lot of decisions and then therefore, like statistically,

a lot of those will be right. But I think what you need to be focusing on is making less decisions but making them better. And that's sort of my version. How I explain the like work smart rather than work hard. So when I think about sort of like, what is the difference between work Smart work hard, especially in the capacity of like What I do is that, like for my job, it's making decisions. So, like, who do I invest in and helping folks make decisions? So helping founders work through the challenges that that, you know, they're they're struggling with Andi Think where I'm able to save time is some decisions like this isn't a decision. We shouldn't be investing time.

And this this doesn't matter, like focusing on helping in those areas that really matter and making, and on Lee myself making decisions that I think are ones that could be truly impactful, like the rest of the rest of your life. The rest of the things that you do, like realizing that this actually isn't that important and if we just do this one thing, right, those other things don't matter at all. And just being really thoughtful about that saves you a ton of time,

right? So it's not like you do less work per day, but your work is more impactful because you're contributing to the right aspects. Correct? Makes sense. Uh, wisdom. It's wonderful. You know, I'm curious. A couple days ago on Twitter, you said my goal for 2018 is to start the same. I don't care instead of I don't know. Can you explain that?

Yeah, that was That was more, uh, mostly joking around. But why I I'm not actually going to do that. But the reason why I said it is that I just find it actually goes along with what I just said. They're like, it's it's exhausting. Like every time you don't know something, I at least feel like I then need to learn about it so that I can have an opinion like we right now live in this world of so much information overload that we tend to, like, not really go deep on everything. So just generally, taking the opinion of like, yeah, I don't understand that. But I'm just going to say I don't care because I'm gonna focus my time elsewhere is just the general mentality that I'm adopting. And that was sort of my like, facetious way of tweeting that out and kind of like a a sort of extreme fashion.

I love it because it's also good advice, I think for all of us. Indeed, there's just so much to read that the more you read, the more you discover that you want to read something else, for example. But you never actually get time to go deep and learn this one thing and the beacon spending the entire day just consuming opinions. And

yeah, my, my, I think also that my parents were in town at the time and they tend to watch, like CNN and the 24 hours news cycle of mountains stop. So, you know, it's always like, Did you hear about this? Like, what about fits your thought on this? I was like, like rather than like I don't know, I actually just started saying like, I don't care like I just don't care. I can't. I can't I can't do this. Um,

I've done this with my mom should get so offended. But it's like, you know, like, I don't care about you. I just don't care about the subject that I don't want it to consume my mind,

right? I don't want to spend the next five minutes were like, I get that. You can try to explain it to me, but I do not want to spend the next five minutes doing that. I don't care.

Let's leave work for a little bit. So you guys went traveling with your 15 months old, although I guess it was a few hours ago that was

it. So we've been on a lot of trips like a lot of trips. So when he was holed without Ben four or five months, we went toe Hawaii. Since then, he's doing a trip to, uh, Pennsylvania. He's been to Boulder, Colorado. He's been the Florida. He's been the four again. He's been in Napa, and then he's been back again. Thio to D. C. And Pennsylvania.

So he sees just locational

way actually started doing is when I have ah, some of those air like, um, you know, holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and all that. But when I actually have work travel trying to tag along before the tripper after the trip. Just bring the whole family and make a short trip of it. So that's actually where a lot of that happened. Like the lower again California, Colorado. The trips were all just tweaking a work trip into a family trip. And so it's been kind of wild, like he's He's really good on airplanes, which I was so stressed about, like I was one of those people who I would before I had a kid. I get mad at people whose kids would be like,

loud and in or me like I have no idea. Now I'm just so stressed because I know there's other people like I used to be, so I like it zits. I'm like, I'm like, looking around at people like whose Who's the old me here that's going to get angry and like, How do I like give them, like the state guy before they start looking at me that way?

Here's an idea. A shirt for planes that just says, Wait a couple of years,

you're gonna be here eventually. Yeah, actually, what was? What was nice was the first trip, which was Hawaii like that was I was really nervous. That is the first time. And the whole plane was like families with little kids. It was like the loudest, craziest flight I've ever been on. But when? When? When my son s been was screaming, Didn't feel bad at all because everyone else was doing well. But like the biggest challenges have been like routine. Like how? How you pull off having kids you have,

like a least. That's how we do like a really rigid routine. Here's when you do this year's and you do this There's this many time there's this much in between here and between here and here and the first couple trips. It was really difficult keeping the routine because we found like, Wow, we traveled to this amazing place and we did nothing like we didn't even leave the hotel room. So really, what we've done is, like, always stay in Airbnb is we do cloth diapers, and we opted to say that was just too complicated. While we're traveling for first trouble trips, we maintained doing cloth diapers, and we basically just spent the entire trip cleaning diapers, which was a mistake. So just realizing that that you have to let your routine go a little bit,

but you need to keep enough of it so that, you know, everything doesn't just fall apart. Um, figuring out how Thio how to eat, eat out and like, make sure that the baby is always happy was a big key thing for us bringing white noise and bringing Ah, so but my son loves Alexis up bringing a, um, attack with us so that Alexa Solons and all that stuff was just with us wherever we again, it has been great. Um, and I think the was there was another thing that's been like a really, uh, big learning. Um uh,

E guess that's the majority of it. Like we've just kind of figured out how to do it. And it's been it's like he's he's a good traveler, like I feel really, really lucky it how it's gone most far.

So in other words, once you figure out the routines, it's not a big deal. Just do it and you'll figure it out.

Oh, remember the one other half, which is like, don't try and change the times over, so it actually works perfectly because he eats it like 5 45 6 o'clock here. And then when we go to the East Coast, we just have a really late dinners and we keep him on like that. That that time zone change is our first trip to Hawaii was like a hilarious mistake with allies like three hours earlier. And so we finally arrived. It's like 11 30 at night. He's in quiet and he's asleep, So we're like we made it. It's so beautiful here, way like open up a bottle of wine and we're just like, this is just so wonderful. And then we go to sleep it like, uh,

12. 30. And then he wakes up at three and he's wide awake, and we're like, Oh, I forgot about this. Like so that that was definitely a rude awakening for us.

Kids did a lovely Uh huh. You know, you could go outside and watch the stars. Well, since we're running a little short in time, let me ask you a couple more questions before we go. Uh, see, actually, speaking of textures and Alexa Techstars has a lot of the last time was an Apple store There were a lot of toys for kids, I guess for young adults from texters, there was a spear or rich robotics, sensible objects and maybe some other ones.

There's a mother's coming to that are

which they're like. They're really cool. But when when do you think is the right time to introduce technology to the kid? I know it's a little early for 15 months,

but that's that's That's such a such a good question. And like I I really, really struggle. That mean we're strong believers in no screens before, too, but in terms of he already loves Alexa. I'm worried that that Alexa will actually be this like, first word other than Mom and Dad. Um, but in terms of like, uh, like some of those those toys, like, really, I think it's just like a lesser of two evils where whenever it's like too difficult to keep him away from screens, your games and all that, I want to throw everything at me.

Adam, to get in tow, tow. Wait as long as possible. Um, and so there's like all these great toys that are, like, really cool multimodal experiences that give you a lot of the engagement in excitement of something that's digital while still being like, like, tactile and still stimulating your imagination in the ways that that I think like physical toys only do because we were wired as human beings to work that way. So I don't have a good answer. But I'm I'm gonna try everything toe, get him to play with all of that stuff rather than you know. I want him to play with Legos rather than for longer, for one to play with Legos well into, you know,

his his childhood rather than immediately migrates of Minecraft like that. That's that's what I want to have happened. I want him to be playing with, like, the play Impossible game Baltic that came out of the elects accelerator rather than playing FIFA. Um, you know, I know eventually that's which will happen, but I'm going to my best to delay it as long as possible.

Do you feel like is if you see you no more inclined to fund all sorts of baby related

start? Oh my God, totally. I was ridiculous. Like my my biases have totally shifted where I just didn't get that those types of Tech before, in the same way that, like I would always think, like, when you're watching a TV show and there's like a baby too sick or dies or in danger, I'd be like, That's contrived and like now I'm fucking bawling. When that stuff happened, it's like it's It's so ridiculous out All of that changes. But yeah, I definitely was laughing about that because we're looking cos relax, accelerator. I was like,

I would just have not got this before. And I totally do, like, not novel effect, which was in the Elect accelerator as well, you know, I was I was aware of them generally before the program with them. After I had a kid. He loves reading. I suddenly, like, started using the product and loving it, and they ended up in the program, and I think that I wouldn't have been It's helpful to them. Maybe not have even, like,

you know, got after recruiting them. If, uh, if I didn't have a kid,

I have to check it out. So last question. What are you now most excited about the future?

Really, it's more and more communication with my son. Like so much of the beginning event like I felt like like babies or little energy vampires. Now I have these moments where he does something so amazing that I get so excited, so excited, and I get I get so much energy because of that, like really being able to communicate with him, like understanding how he thinks about things like how his brain is wiring together the mental models he's treated like. I'm just so excited to talk with my kid like figure out who he actually is, like, That's the thing I'm most excited for by a wide margin. Like I joke with my wife that, you know, everyone says like You don't want a teenager like I can't wait to have, like a really complicated, stimulating conversations with that, like some of my best memories of my grandfather used to live with us.

And favorite memories of my dad when I was younger was like us having these giant arguments over dinner about like politics and world world blank world events in almost like a uh ah, what's the, uh, the brain isn't quite working from lack of sleep, like arguing over the tell mood like it's just I I can't wait to do that with him, so

Well, first you're gonna pass the phase where they're not gonna want to talk to you, and it's all gonna be by themselves, but, yeah, they only get more exciting. Literally. Every days you see them grow. Yeah, thank you for coming on the show, even though it's been brief, but it's been awesome. I can hear how excited having a kid. Maybe it's four hours of sleep, but But you're certainly one of the most excited Dad's talked about when it comes to parenting some. I'm looking forward to see what your son grows up. Like maybe he'll be the next CEO of Amazon. The future and

yeah, well, see, Well, I really I really appreciate you having me on here. And I think one thing to just kind of leave it with this, Like, you know, I didn't really knew that I wanted to be a dad, And I also didn't really know what kind of dad I was gonna be. And, you know, having the kid was so much about like, it's just sort of what you're supposed to do. And, you know, in the early days it felt like it was something that maybe my wife wanted more than I did on.

And that after meeting him and having him like it was just, I can't even believe that I would have ever thought that way Previously, it's such an incredible experience. Um, that's amazing.

Well, here's to another couple of kids.

One more, only one

more. That's what you're saying. Get it gets exponentially harder. Why, thanks so much. Thank you. All right, see you soon.

Thank you. Our listeners, for listening to get another episode of right that show. As always, If you want to get in touch, just email me at the editor at rad dad show dot com. And if you enjoy this episode, I want to hear more. Please leave us a review in iTunes or anywhere you listening to podcasts.