Creating A Culture That Prioritizes Family | Guy Yalif (father of 2, co-founder/CEO of Intellimize)

Guy: You only control how you show up. You don't control anything else.

You do, you want all these things for them, but it's not your choice. It's theirs. And to realize, hey, we're just, you know, Sherpas along the way, when we went from infallible to completely wrong and somewhere along the way, we're like, hey, it's their journey and we should help them as much as we can.

Adam: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep in the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman, and in today's episode, I sat down with Guy Yalif, the co-founder and CEO of Intellimize, a platform that helps optimize web experiences through testing, personalization, and AI.

Prior to Intellimize, Guy was an ad tech and product leader at BrightRole, Twitter, and Yahoo. He is a husband and a father of two teenagers. In our conversation, we discuss Guy's unique experiences founding a company with his close friends, and how his professional decisions have been influenced by his role as a father.

Guy reflects on his mother's career as a banker in the 70s and seeing her lead in an industry dominated by men. We talk about how this has impacted his parenting, his career decisions, and how it shaped his views on the importance of communication and planning in managing family logistics. In a world where being a CEO tends to take you away from your family, it was heartening to hear Guy talk about starting a company so that he could build a culture that allowed him to spend more time with his.

I hope you enjoy it.

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Adam: I would like to welcome Guy Yaluf to the program today. Guy, it is such a pleasure to have you on Startup Dad. Thank you for joining me.

Guy: Adam, thank you so much for having me. It's a privilege and I'm excited to continue the conversation we started a while ago.

Adam: We did! The last time you and I chatted was like back in December, you were saying, so, I guess I finally got my stuff together for the show so we can record it now. I wanted to jump right in and just say, you know, tell us a bit more about your professional background. You are a CEO and founder of a company.

So I just love to hear a little bit about that.

Guy: I started off as an aerospace engineer, thought I was going to design planes for the rest of my life and loved the idea. Had a bunch of friends try management consulting, did that for three years. They kick you out, make you go get an MBA, did that, and then came to Silicon Valley and discovered this role called product manager, where being good at tech and being good at business makes you good at that job.

I loved it. I was so happy. Did that for a decade. You know, across several companies. And then at one of the companies, someone said, hey, go run this product marketing team. And I said, I don't know product marketing. I said, that's cool. Go do that. And loved it. And so spent a decade in marketing. And in my last job was VP of marketing at a company where I lived the problem that we're solving and thought to potentially go solve this and started this company with two guys I've known for 20 years.

And I've been doing this for seven years now and it's the best job I've ever had. And it's not because I'm CEO, it's because of this culture and this group of people I have the privilege of working with every day.

Adam: That's great. What was it like starting a company with two people that you've known for decades? is that hard? Have you already worked through a lot of your issues before you even get into company creation?

Guy: The very first thing we talked about on the morning of the very first day was culture and values. Because there's so much mumbo jumbo in so many other places we've worked at, you know, bet we've all had jobs where like 80 percent of the energy went towards internal alignment in the meeting to prep for the meeting.

And I get that that's, it's important, especially in large organizations, but 99.9 percent of energy goes out the door to making customers happy. And so we believe. Culture is one of the very few things that flows from the top. And I view it actually for us as a scaling mechanism. And so we talked about that then to your point about, did we work stuff out?

We sat down that afternoon and asked really hard questions. Three of us chose to be equals. And then we said, well, what if one of us gets in over our head? Like we're just not qualified to do the job anymore as the company scales. What if we get acquired? Not that we're building to do that, but if that happened and they want to treat us unequally, but we want to be equal.

How would we handle that? And a whole bunch of other things. And we're really surprised at how smoothly that conversation went. So not only was there historical trust, we then went and checked. You know, Myers Briggs, Enneagram, we're like, ah, got it. This is why that went so smoothly.

Adam: That's awesome. Yeah. I always love to hear, I've talked to people who have like started companies with family members, people who've started with friends. And I'm always curious what that's like having never started a company myself. So,

Guy: Well, I mean, you sort of started one solo here and I must admit that, that would be hard for me because I'm innately an extrovert. It's not a capability thing or a fear thing. It's more of the like. I'd want other people to talk to every day.

Adam: Yeah, yeah, maybe that's part of what drew me to podcasting is that I love talking to people. So, I want to go all the way back in time and ask you a little bit about what life was like growing up. Where are you from originally? What was your family like?

Guy: I actually was born in Israel and came to the States when I was three because of a divorce. My mom is on her third. I'm a product of the first. I grew up with the second and the guy I call my brother, even though biologically he's my half brother. So we had 14 years together and we came to the States, frankly, with like less than nothing.

And my parents worked their tails off. And live the American dream. And a bunch of very strong parents. My mom was a banker in New York in the 70s. and like, super duper impressive work ethic to show my brother and me. She then got divorced and remarried again. And so technically I've got eight siblings and it's joyful as an adult to have so many adult siblings to spend time with. The early part of childhood I had the one. And grew up mostly in New Jersey, spent summers in Israel with family there. The consulting was three years in Boston and then moved out to San Francisco in ‘97 for grad school. And folks were like, you're going to miss the seasons. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I don't know where my umbrella is 270 days a year. I am so happy about that. I do not miss the seasons and we get the snow nearby that I feel very privileged to live in this area.

Adam: That's awesome. I always tell people I do like the seasons, but I like to have choice of whether or not I can experience them I don't like them thrust on me. So, um…

Guy: That's brilliant. I like that.

Adam: Pretty amazing. You said your mom was a banker in the ‘70s I'll bet there were like boardrooms where she was the only woman in the room.

That’s not a very common female profession in the ‘70s.

Guy: She took us to work a couple of times and she was the only woman there, period. And absolutely held her own and continued a career in banking. And you know, I'm guessing that's what caused me to marry the strongest woman I've ever dated, a fiery Spaniard, and we're raising two very strong, confident young women.

Adam: That's awesome. Well, speaking of fiery Spaniards, tell me about your family. Now you have a partner and you have two kids and I'm curious how you met your partner and how old your kids are.

Guy: I met my partner the good old fashioned way. We met in a bar.

Adam: Okay.

Guy: In Boston, behind Fenway on Lansdowne street, for anybody that knows Boston. And that was, I can't believe I can say this, but 28 years ago. We got married six years later, another four years later, so after a decade together, had our first kid and we have 18 and 15 year old girls.

The first one went off to college a month ago, which is just mind boggling to me, because I remember the beginning, like it was yesterday and the 15 year old just started high school.

Adam: Wow. Two big milestone moments in life. Big, big transitions. How have they been doing with the big new life changes?

Guy: Fortunately, they both landed really well. For the oldest, she is a strong, confident, independent young woman. She's ready. And as a side note, as her father, it was incredible to hold so deeply at the same time, immense pride about that and immense sadness because I don't get to see her every day anymore.

And both are true at the same time. And a 15 year old started a new high school and she found her people, which is really nice. She's enjoying it a lot.

Adam: That's amazing. And so your wife is a fiery Spaniard who you met at a bar. Maybe she spilled a drink on your head or something like that. Does your wife work outside of the house? Does she have a job kind of similar to yours?

Guy: She has always, besides the few months after each kid, worked outside of the home. And she found the job she likes right out of college. One of the very lucky few who did. She's been a merchant and a buyer in retail forever. So back in the day when department stores, you know, were, more impactful on commerce.

She was in department stores. Then she spent the last decade plus in e-commerce. And she would joke, I mentioned consulting kicks you out and you have to go get an MBA and I'd have classmates that were like working hard and eventually reached the pinnacle where they could own the four P's price, product, placement, promotion, and she was like…why'd you guys do that? I own those the day I got out of college.

Adam: My very first job out of college was at a retailer called Mervins, which is now bankrupt.

Guy: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Adam: But was very popular. So your classic like department store and we had tons of merchants and buyers and all that stuff. So very familiar with that job. It sounds like she caught the e-commerce wave just at the right time too, which is great.

What was the decision like - the two of you are both hardworking, right? I mean, her job is not an easy one. It’s pretty intense, sometimes comes with travel and stuff like that, I imagine. You, now a CEO of a company, but you know, product leader for a while, marketing leader, what was that decision like to start a family?

What were those conversations like?

Guy: For us, before getting married, made sure we were aligned on, did we want to have kids at all? And we both did. And how many did we want? And she doesn't remember it this way, she tells me, but I thought I wanted one or two and she wanted two or three. So that was easy. We wanted two.

Adam: Yeah, there's an overlap.

Guy: Yep. And then at some point he was ready and I was not and there was probably a two year Delta in there and we both said to each other, we need to desperately want one of these creatures to be good parents because it's, it's all consuming and a funny story.

One of our friends had a birthday party for their kid. I think like two, three years old and we're there and I've never in my entire life had a panic attack. And I don't think that was, but I could imagine it was in that direction because there was a moment where there were like 20 kids running around this, this small apartment.

I was like, Monica, we got to go like this, this, I, I, I need to go. And she called that friend. I was like, why did you invite us? That delayed us having kids by like a year. And then at some point I desperately wanted one of these little creatures. And we started trying.

Adam: Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. I wouldn't recommend necessarily attending two or three year old birthday parties when you are not a member of that class, you know, when you don't have kids, kids of your own it's less fun than other birthday parties. I can, I could say, but I can imagine what it was like with, you know, two dozen kids in an apartment. That reminds, it brings back anxiety in me around some early birthday parties that I went to with my kids. But yeah, do you recall if there was something that kind of pushed you over the edge and where you were like, all right, now I'm ready. Was there like a moment or something - spent enough time with other people's kids or anything like that?

Guy: Maybe for other people that are for me. It just, at one point I was like, Let's, let's do this. I really want to do this.

Adam: Yeah. Okay.

Guy: Desperately want to do this, this life level journey.

Adam: Yeah. Oh, and what a, what a journey it is. So I wanted to follow up too, because you know, again, you and your wife both work full time. And you mentioned to me when we were getting ready for this call that you don't have a clan nearby. You don't have a lot of family in and around.

Sounds like you have family in Israel, maybe some people on the east coast or something. How did you make that work? And then we'll talk a little bit about how do you make it work now? Maybe it's a little easier.

Guy: Happy to share. And she also has family in Spain. So they were all reasonably far away. Lots and lots of communication. It went right back to the one piece of advice my dad gave me before I got married was, look for a partner. You may think, you know, as so many of us do it, that is like, oh, she's super pretty.

He's super handsome. But he said, look for a partner. And that was absolutely crucial at this point to talk a lot. I know different families have different balances. Ours happened to be 50/50. That was the right one for us. And you know, it's really important to both of us to know our kids and to maintain a relationship together.

We happen to believe, everybody's got their own view, that like our relationship is the foundation, it is the thing they should see modeled. Mechanically, we got a nanny early on, then they went to preschool at about 18 months, because that's when we got into the preschool. And now as they're older.

It sounds silly because it sounds almost like work, but a bunch of calendars. There's the family calendar. There's the mom and dad calendar that we each have our own and we happen to use Google calendar. So you can just overlay them and the kids every once in a while. So we got to do this. Like it's not on the calendar.

It doesn't exist because there's so many other things going on. So many sports to go to and this and that. And lastly, we got really clear on just what are the mechanics of running the family. Because as you know, , there's just a lot of stuff to do to keep everything going. One of which should be, at least in our humble opinion, taking care of ourselves and going out for date night and talking about something other than mechanics every once in a while.

Adam: Yeah that part that you mentioned too about if it's not on the calendar It doesn't exist. That is I feel like you're channeling me. I know I have said that myself many times. Something about getting older and maybe it's the number of plates that you have to spin when you have kids but I used to be able to hold all of the things that I needed to do in my head and suddenly at some point in time that just fell off.

And so now, yeah, if it's not literally reminding me from a calendar, I, I wouldn't know what I need to be doing in a day. So, it's pretty wild. I love that. Tell me about any rituals that you and your wife had, you know, sometimes people do. They sync up on a weekly basis. They talk, you know, at different times.

They have family meetings. Did you do anything like that? Or anything to kind of keep those logistics in sync outside of the calendaring?

Guy: We would have dinner as a family literally every day. And when they got older and had devices, that was the only time of the day where it was no devices, nothing. You are here. We're sitting together as a family. And when our oldest became old enough to drive and would hang out with their friends more, we talked about it and said, should we pick a day during the week?

And she said, no. So we just said, hey, at least once a week, we need to be doing that. And so that was good. The other thing was then before going to bed, we would just chat about, hey, what about this? What about that? Have you done this? Have you thought about that? And then in the middle of the day, you know, I'll get texts.

I'll text her just to make sure stuff is covered.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah.

Guy: So no, we did not have anything super organized, just lots of communication. How about you? What did, what do you do?

Adam: That's a great question. We've tried various things. We've tried the kind of family meeting. Our kids are a little young for everyone getting together and doing the family meeting. We use the calendaring system quite heavily, lots of texts, lots of communication. Those are the things that tend to work best.

I think, and you, could probably appreciate this stuff changes so much when you have kids, this practice get canceled, that thing moves locations, this thing happens, somebody gets sick, et cetera. And so you're just, even the best plans, right. Need to be adjusted usually on a daily basis. So yeah.

Guy: You throw in planning a vacation every once in a while and birthday parties and it's fixed. Yes, it could be a full time job.

Adam: What is the earliest memory that you have after becoming a father?

Guy: Our oldest happened to be Breach, so she was a C section. I can visualize here that moment, her entering the world. It was amusing because coming out breech, she came out, they pulled her out butt first, and so she's half in the world. She poops, because this organism was like, it's cold! And so we joked the first thing she did was poop on the world.

I can remember the first diaper that day, like, you know, I don't know, a few hours later in the hospital, taking her home. Those, those feel really vivid. I couldn't tell you what we did a week later, but that day for both daughters, Super vivid. Do you have that same thing?

Adam: I Have some of those memories. Yeah, I actually, birthing memories, of course, and then I always remember, when we would get home with our kids, we would put them in the middle of the bed, like our bed, and just look at how giant the bed is compared to this tiny human. And I remember the first time we did that with my daughter, and I was like, oh wow, this is this is a very tiny person and a very large bed.

And that just sort of puts things in perspective for some reason. That was, that was like my thing.

Guy: We were terrified. I know you didn't say the words asleep, but we were terrified that we'd put the kid between us, fall asleep, and just roll over and, hurt our kid, answer didn’t want to do that.

Adam: Yeah. No, no. No, we would put her in the middle and sort of stand back and..

Guy: Yeah,

Adam: Oh, look, there she is. She's not because kids can't really move very much, you know, or at all when they're born. So, yeah. I wanted to ask too. So, you know, something, something like a breach and then your daughter coming out, butt first that's a surprising thing.

And then the thing that happened right then, what are some of the other most surprising things that you've discovered as a dad, maybe, maybe post birth.

Guy: We would say, over time, as our second grew up, our job is not to be good parents. Which sounds counterintuitive. Our job is to be the right parent for each kid. Because there is no one thing, one standard that's right for each kid. They both have extremely different strengths, they have extremely different needs for where they want support, where they want independence.

Ultimately, we told them, look, the destination has similar characteristics for you to be strong, confident, independent, young women. But what that means for each of them is really, really different. And our kids are really different and it's beautiful, each is amazing in their own way. And if we parented them the same way, it'd be really bad for one or both of them.

I'm sure they'll say our parenting was bad anyway, but at least we'd recognize the bad part.

Adam: Yeah, you get another like 10 or 15 years and then they grow up and blame the whole thing on you. So,

Guy: You're joking. We literally said to each other when we were starting to try, we said, Look, we'll try to fix everything we think our parents could have done better with us. We'll break them in new ways that we didn't anticipate. And no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, It's all our fault. And when they were teenagers, they proved that hypothesis correct.

Adam: Yeah. That's funny. Tell me about some of your daughter's strengths and some of the areas where they need support.

Guy: So one is incredibly creative, has more creativity in her pinky than I have in my whole body and makes friends very, very quickly. Is a voracious reader but struggles with executive function. She's got ADHD and doing a bunch of the organization that, you know, feels natural in my brain, does not feel natural in her brain and helping her build the scaffolding and support around her so that she can give herself the supports to enable her to go manage through everyday, you know, life.

She's the one who would, nail the homework because she knows how to do it, but then not turn it in. Not because she was slacking, just it flipped her mind. The other one also makes friends easily, confident, great at math, loves country music, loves live music, is now in college in Nashville.

I happen not to be a huge live music fan. She loves it. I remember we left the airport, there's live music in the airport. Like, that makes her very, very happy.

Adam: Yeah, there's music everywhere in Nashville. So she ended up in a good spot. That's really great. You know, we talked about some of these systems and, calendaring and things like that. But what are some of the frameworks or the guardrails that you've learned or developed as a parent?

Guy: We didn't have... As you brought up earlier, the family meeting, the system, we didn't have as much of that. We tried to pick as few things as possible and say these are hard boundaries. And for the rest, you know, express some preferences, they clearly had boundaries, right? I mean, it's important for them to learn in life because that is part of real life, but they were around respect.

 For me, it was really big for them to know all the time. We love them. So literally in our family of four, when we leave, even leave the house, we will say, I love you every single time. And if we're in the middle of a fight in the heat of battle, even if we're yelling, we will pause right in the middle and be like, I just want you to know, I love you, we're having this fight, but I love you. And then we'll go right back to it. And that they said was, really important to them. Another one that we discovered over time, which I think all of us learn, whether it's at home or elsewhere, you only control how you show up. You don't control anything else.

You do, you want all these things for them, but it's not your choice. It's theirs. And to realize, hey, we're just, you know, Sherpas along the way, when we went from infallible to completely wrong and somewhere along the way, we're like, hey, it's their journey and we should help them as much as we can. That was aided a lot by getting a decent night's rest.

That was aided by checking if they've eaten enough and things like that. How about you? What, scaffolding did you put in place?

Adam: Oh, great question. I took a parenting class when my daughter was very young and it was on positive discipline. And I learned that whole topic actually wrote a post about this a long time ago. And that was a really big one. And what you said, you can only control how you show up this idea of modeling behavior which I still don't do perfectly.

But it is amazing how much kids are like a sponge in a mirror of what you do. And so, if you get frustrated and lose your patience, they will too. If you're calm and cool, they recover quicker. So just that has been a big one for me, a big kind of cornerstone of my learning about parenting,

Guy: Did you take that course at Stanford?

Adam: I did not, but I am aware of all the Stanford professors and it was brought into that class. I think it's Carol Dweck who talks about the growth mindset and things like that. That was a big part of that program. So, not at Stanford. But influenced and informed by Stanford.

Guy: To your point about they are sponges and are always watching. I don't know if this was cause and effect, but it was surprising to me. My oldest happened to play competitive volleyball at a national level. Loved it. Just was really passionate about it. And we of course then told her, Hey, if you think you're good enough to be a recruited athlete in college, go do that.

It'll help you get in. It might help pay for college. And she said, I want to go to a D one school. Cause I want the camaraderie and the spirit and all that great. She said, but I don't, I don't want to be a recruited athlete. And we said, this really could help you and could help the economics of college.

And when we dug and dug, it took a few months, dug and dug and dug. She said, I want more to college than just that. I want to go to school and have some athletics, not do athletics and go to school. So she's playing club volleyball, which is like high school varsity. Great. When we dug further, she remembered that when she was seven or eight, we talked about, I happened to row freshman crew in college and enjoyed it a ton. And then stopped because I wanted to enjoy the rest of college, loved the people I was rowing with, but went and did that. And she said, maybe that burrowed into her head. She was like, I don't know, maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but they're always watching.

She remembered that moment. And I said it once, twice, five, 10 years before she made this decision. Yeah. They are sponges. They watch everything. Yeah.

Adam: I wanted to ask you one thing, I've talked to a few dads of teenagers you got the freshmen in, high school and you've got a teenager in college who's only a couple more years away from not being a teenager anymore. It happens fast. One of the things that I've talked about with some other dads, and I'm curious to get your take on this, is this idea of letting kids make their own decisions, and how that kind of starts to creep in more and more as they get older, obviously they're becoming more independent, and you mentioned that was an important thing for you, strong, independent, confident young women, how has that manifested? How has it worked out that you've been able to kind of give them more and more rope, so to speak, as they've gotten older and still be confident that they'll make good decisions.

Guy: So I'm sure we got it wrong a whole bunch of times. I don't know that there is a right answer about it. But the place at least we are now is to talk explicitly about it so that they understand what we believe is important. So they understand the cause and effect with boundaries changing because when they change without us explaining it, it feels totally arbitrary and that gets you into a power struggle with them, which at least we found super duper unhelpful and instead to be able to say to your point about positive parenting earlier.

Hey, we think you should do X, get your homework done, be home when you say you're going to be, go be responsible when you're hanging out with your friends, whatever it might be you did that. That's great. Please keep doing that. We talked to them about like earning more trust. And then sometimes when they said they were doing X and they were doing Y was like, hey, that reduced trust and talk about the impact. We also over time learned and you know, I don't know whether it was coaching or reading. Came to believe the feedback needs to be in the moment, kind of just like at work, so that they connect them. And the changes, positive or negative, have to be proportional. It's way too easy to get unhappy or upset and...

Exert way too much power and do some punishment that feels emotionally sating to the parent, but it's really disproportionate to the kid. And thinking about, hey, the only thing we control is how we show up. At least for me, it was really helpful. I'm like, flow it down, reach some even keelness.

And then share something, even if that means, hey this happened. It's not okay. I'm gonna go take a minute and get centered again. And then I'm going to come back and we're going to talk about what's going to happen.

Adam: That makes a ton of sense. I really liked that last point. I find myself doing that as a dad often. And sometimes when the kids are younger, I'm just going to take a beat. Leave the room, minute later, all is right in the world again. So one of the things that you've talked about a lot is that partnership is really important with your wife.

And you said your dad gave you the advice to find a partner. And so, it seems like you and your wife agree on a lot of things. But there's a, but coming, it's also really hard to agree all the time. It's, it's impossible. I imagine you don't agree with your co-founders a hundred percent of the time at the company.

And so I'm curious, what is something that you and your wife don't agree on when it comes to parenting or, something like that?

Guy: We felt very lucky that pre-marriage, we talked through a whole bunch of stuff. And we're quite aligned or there was overlap, so we were all fine, right? It wasn't, Oh, I'm going to change who I am because that's really hard to do. Then when we were in marriage and in this long term relationship, there'd be little things, you know, mechanics about that.

She likes the bed being made. I don't particularly care about that. It's really important to her. So I'll go make the bed. There were some things we had to just understand. Those will never change. You know, Christmas Eve is a really important emotional moment for my wife, for a whole bunch of historical family reasons. That is really important. It was never something we wanted to change, but the whole family needs to remember that day. It's important to get dressed up and go out to dinner,

Adam: Yeah.

Guy: Or it might be something mundane as, you know, it's really important that I empty the dishwasher every morning.

And okay, I'll go, I'll go do that part. The one thing we materially disagreed on actually was sex for our kids, like when birds and the bees and everything around that and what's allowed, what's not. That's the one thing we didn't see eye to eye on. And we feel lucky that there was only that one major thing because.

Now, in retrospect, I feel like you can align on a whole bunch of things. Where do you want to live? How hard do you want to work? How important is family? Those kind of things. No matter what you say about how you think you're going to raise kids, at least in my humble opinion, you don't know. You're going to find out when you get there.

And so, it's not possible to align in advance.

Adam: Really interesting single place where the two of you didn't always see eye to eye, you know, hasn't come up possibly because my kids are younger, but I imagine it does come up once they get older. So really, really fascinating. What is a thing that you've had to give up to become a father?

Guy: At least in the early years. And I could imagine you're still experiencing a bunch of this given the age of your kids, personal space, just time to kill, decompress. I think everyone does. I don't think you can, it's possible to describe it until you're there. And I remember when we had our second. We both thought, with great joy, we were having our second and we remembered everything that's involved and we thought there's no way I could lose as much personal space as I did with the first one and then you realize, no, no, it's possible.

You can go further. And that was humbling. And you raised these amazing little creatures that changed your whole life.

Adam: Yeah, that's, that's great. Personal space is one. We talk a lot about time, obviously time to chill time for yourself. That's one that comes up a lot with dads. Personal space is a really interesting one. That has not come up, but I know exactly what you mean. Kids are like heat seeking missiles.

They can find you wherever you are. And if you're not within earshot, they're going to find you somehow.

Guy: I'm totally, totally, totally with you. And there were times like, I don't know, corollary of that where we would think, is our kid being devious and manipulative? And no, whether they're the heat seeking missile or trying to get the thing they want, it's just that they're being rational, they're like, I want X, this is the path that's been defined for me to go get X, I'm gonna go do that.

And we found when we were inconsistent as parents. It opened up lots of pathways that we didn't want opened, but we were inconsistent. It really was on us.

Adam: Yeah, yeah. When you think back to some maybe mistakes that you've made as a dad, we all make them. That's part of the reason I have this show, to normalize those mistakes. What are some mistakes that you've made?

Guy: Too many to count, way too many to count. One was that, that devious versus, hey, they're just being resourceful. Another one was I happen to enjoy working hard and I happen to care an awful lot about knowing my kids and my wife. Those are the, you know, the most important things to me. And there was a time when I thought knowing my kids was about the number of hours with them.

And that can create a bunch of tension where there aren't enough hours in the day. And to realize... That's actually not it. It was quality minutes with the kids. I remember times when I would carve out several hours, and we just wouldn't feel connected. And then there'd be times when I'd have 20 minutes with them, but we were really together. Focused on whatever it was that was important to them, and they felt more connected and more engaged and more enriched. That was a humbling learning for me that... I didn't learn until way too late and I'm sure if you ask them, their list will like scroll down past the bottom of the screen.

Adam: Well, that is one nice thing, especially about teenagers. They're going to give you some feedback, right?

Guy: Yes, and very, very few of us get a chance to act on it. I mentioned my mom had three. Her third started when I was 14. They had four kids. She actually asked me, what should I do differently? And there was one piece of advice I gave her, and she actually did it. And we reflected on it just this year we were together, the whole family.

And she said, I really acted on it. Kids were like, yes, yes, she did. And I said, that's really impressive.

Adam: What was that piece of advice? If you can share, I'm super curious now.

Guy: It actually was directly related to in the heat of battle when you're arguing to remind someone you love them. When I was the kid those words didn't come out. And we were a very emotive family. So it felt like the love tap turned off when that's not actually what was happening, but that was the felt emotion and she didn't do that and I applaud her for it.

That's a hard thing to adjust.

Adam: Very impressive. So the person who introduced us, it was a wonderful woman named Jesse, said Guy’s started a company so that he could achieve the balance that he wanted. And to me that is, seems so opposite of what most people would do, right?

If you think about being really busy, well, the CEO of a company is a pretty busy guy. You got a lot of people who you're responsible for and a company that you're responsible for. And so I think a lot of people would think starting a company doesn't actually help you achieve balance, but for you, it has.

And so I'm curious about that decision and kind of how you approach balance in your life.

Guy: The stereotype of the startup you're describing I lived with great joy in com one. I was employee one at a company that grew to about 80 people, made it through the crash and got acquired. I tracked my time. I averaged 80 hours a week for two years working, not that screwing around time at work.

Adam: hmm.

Guy: I peaked at 135 one week.

My then fiance now wife said, if this is what you want permanently, I'm not sure we're the right match. I said, it's not what I want permanently. This job we describe it to the team and this is the resulting thought process. This is more than a 40 hour a week job, but we think we make better decisions, get more done and have better business outcomes if you get a good night's rest, you have a hobby, you know your friends and family, that other model, I actually think we made worse decisions and working fewer hours than that. I think I get far more done now. And I think it was an illusion to think that, grinding that hard produced better thought.

Still work very hard. It also then allowed us to attract people we wouldn't otherwise get. People who said, hey, I'm tired of all… earlier we talked about politics and the lack of that here. One thing and another thing to say, hey, this team likes to win. have no lack of passion for winning. This isn't, I want a lifestyle job. This isn't that this is hard, but it's not. And there's nothing else literally in my life. Full stop, then in addition, as I've been privileged to work with an incredible team and an incredible executive team, very counterintuitively, I found having idle time made me better at my job, in particular, this seat where you're supposed to look around corners and look further down the field.

And having some more idle moments allowed me to look further down the field in ways that made really big differences. And that was completely counterintuitive after, like so many of us, I worked harder, I got good grades, I worked harder again, I played harder. Like all of that, this, this felt exactly as you said, counterintuitive.

Adam: Yeah. It sounds like you may have also talked to your kids or just modeled this for them because some of the stories you tell me about your daughters seem sort of similar to how you think about balance between work and personal time. Your daughter's story about college and athletics and having other things come first and athletics come second.

So I'm curious if that's something that's been explicitly talked about in your, household. Or if it's one of those things that they've just kind of learned through osmosis and watching \ you do it.

Guy: We were pretty explicit about it because one of the life level fears I had in like, hey, will I be a bad dad was working too hard. And I was really explicit with them on, I want to show you the joy of somebody who loves what they're doing at work. It's an important thing to see. And I also want to teach you that working hard tends to result in better outcomes and the things you want in life.

And you and your mom are the most important people in the world to me, and I want to know you and enjoy the time with you. And there were times every once in a while when they'd say. Dad, you're working too hard and I would be thunderstruck because I didn't realize that would be happening. And then occasionally there'd be times, maybe around a fundraising, for example, where I would tell the kids, hey, I'm gonna be working extra hard for the next couple of months. And so they'd be prepared to know this is not the norm. I'm still important. And I'm sure we got that wrong a thousand times, but yeah, it was an explicit discussion.

Adam: That's great. Last thing I wanted to ask you before we get into my rapid fire round is how can people follow along with your journey or be helpful to you in any way? The listeners to this show.

Guy: I'd love to connect over LinkedIn, it's a place where at least I, will do some talking. I would love to meet new people. If you want to talk AI, talk marketing. That's fun for me. I would enjoy doing it. Or if you want to talk entrepreneurship, have infinite energy to support folks who are on similar journeys.

Adam: All right. Awesome. I will make sure to link to your LinkedIn in the show notes. Okay. Are we ready for the rapid fire

Guy: Let's do it.

Adam: All right. I will ask you a question and you will say the first thing that comes to mind, and we're going to go through these quick cause that's what makes it fun. So here we go. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

Guy: Blankie.

Adam: What is the most useless parenting product that you have ever purchased?

Guy: Way too many to count, and many of them have names and words that I did not know existed before I was a parent.

Adam: I love that. What is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

Guy: Uh, my kid's telling me I was working too hard because it's a life level goal not to.

Adam: Hmm. How many parenting books do you have in your house?

Guy: We had one or two.

Adam: And how many parenting books have you read cover to cover?

Guy: None, but we tried to get the uh, key parts from them.

Adam: The Cliffs Notes versions.

Guy: Yes, exactly what I was thinking in my head, yes.

Adam: What is the favorite ages for your kids?

Guy: Each is different. Each is wonderful. I particularly enjoyed, I don't know, 7-10? Because you're still in the place where you can do nothing wrong. They're on the verge of realizing you are a fallible human being, and they still want to spend time with you. And that's a fun combination.

Adam: All right. What about the opposite? What is the least favorite age for your kids?

Guy: Again, each is different in their own way. I'd say it is incredibly joyful and hard to watch them individuate. It's exactly what you want them to do. It is the definition of going and being an adult. And it hurts when, when you feel that shift from I choose when we spend time together because they want more time, to they're going to choose when we spend time together because they want to go spend time with their friends.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Screen time. So you've got teenagers, they've got phones. What do we think about screen time? Good, bad, indifferent.

Guy: I really wish we'd played this one differently. We gave each one an iPhone when they were 10 because that was going to be the moment they needed to travel solo on their way to school on, you know, a bus or a train. I really wish we'd given them something more locked down. Even though I spent time helping this one tiny piece of building Twitter in its early days I wish we'd kept that away from them and just given them an actual phone.

Adam: Yeah. Or well, they used to call them a dumb phone or something.

Guy: Yes, no, literally that. I was like, could we get them a flip phone? And it didn't even cross our minds that, that you could. And yeah, that is a regret.

Adam: Okay. How often do you forget to share the last piece of dessert?

Guy: So, not often, but we do have this phrase in the family that I completely made up called Daddy Tax, where something will arrive and...

Adam: I have that with my kids too. They even offer it up now. They're like, okay, the dad tax here. It is. I like to get the first bite.

Guy: Ha

Adam: So

Guy: ha

Adam: What is the most embarrassing thing that you've ever done in front of your kids?

Guy: There are countless of them. I, every day, I, ha ha, I have a hard time picking one.

Adam: All right. All right. Too many to list. What about the most absurd thing that one of your kids has ever asked you to buy for them?

Guy: Oh, my youngest she would think about something and for half an hour and then want some like life level purchase. And it's like some huge commitment, we must do it right now. And there are many examples, music, some collectible item, many examples.

Adam: Awesome. Awesome. I love that phrase, too. Life level. Gives you the order of magnitude of the purchase. What is the most difficult kids TV show that you've had to sit through?

Guy: I don't recall being tortured with the TV shows, but forgive me. I don't even remember the name, but everyone in the world knows that the let it snow movie, oh my God, or let it go. Sorry. Let it go. Oh my God. It up frozen. I was like, enough, enough. I, it's a great movie. It's wonderful. That's why people enjoyed it so much.

But my kids played it so many times.

Adam: Yes, our daughter had a costume that would light up and play this song and then mysteriously the batteries disappeared and we couldn't turn it on anymore.

Guy: I have one just like that. Where our oldest at some point learned the digital alarm clock and learned I wake up at 7. So if she got up earlier, she would stay in bed till 7. And we'd say on the weekends Why don't you sleep later? Sleep in. She's like, no, I wake up at 7. Magically, her alarm clock had daylight savings time every Friday night, and it returned back every Sunday night.

Adam: I love that one. That's a next level parenting hack right there.

Guy: Ha ha ha!

Adam: Have you ever used your kids as an excuse to get out of social events?

Guy: No, or almost no, but I have sometimes used them as, I'm ready to go. So I'll say, yeah, I gotta go home and spend time with the kids.

Adam: All right, so we talked about Frozen, so I know that's not this one, but which Disney or Pixar movie are you secretly a fan of?

Guy: I loved Inside Out, like naming your emotions, realizing that one will be more prominent or take control of you at one time or another. I think it's a really insightful thing to share with kids, and I think they presented it beautifully.

Adam: Yeah, I love that movie too. And I understand it's actually fairly scientifically accurate with how the brain works and things like that. So, they did it, they did a fair amount of research on, on that. So, like

Guy: That core memory thing is real?

Adam: Long term memories and short term memory and stuff like that. Yeah, pretty interesting. Um. Have you ever accidentally mixed up your kid's names?

Guy: All the time. Not like all the time, but with great regularity, so does my wife. And now that one is off at college. The dog and our youngest! It drives her bananas.

Adam: She probably, she probably loves that. Loves that to get the dog's name. Okay, tell me about the evolution of sleep. How many hours of sleep do you actually get and how has that changed over time?

Guy: I had a good 10, 20 years where I drank 10 to 20 diet cokes a day every day with no exaggeration and probably got three to five hours of sleep. And I remember at one birthday, going to the doctor and saying, I'm no hypochondriac at all. But now that it was 40, I said, what are the things I should worry about?

And the only thing he pointed out was sleep. He said, you're going to come in here with a heart attack in 10 years. And I said, you realize we work in Silicon Valley. He said, that's cute. Your body won't like that. So I got an aura ring, which I absolutely love. Went to seven, seven and a half. Now it ebbs and flows, but it'll sound really silly, but just moving from the three to five to seven.

I was leading the same life, but it felt like another Disney movie. It felt like Bambi. Like, the clouds came out, the birds were chirping, there were a bunch of…same life! I was more emotionally regulated, and it was shocking what a positive impact it has.

Adam: Alright. How often do you tell your kids back in my day stories?

Guy: As infrequently as I can, because I know they are probably super boring. I do however, we talked to them about, can you imagine this device existing when, and so talking to them about CDs, they knew those. So talking to them about vinyl records, they could understand that explaining a cassette tape.

That was super confusing to them. And then we point out a phone booth and they're like, why, why do you do, why does a phone booth exist?

Adam: I love that. Cassette tapes and phone booth. Don't even get 'em started on like eight track, you know, that's like,

Guy: It's totally,

Adam: They will never know. Alright. Speaking of eight tracks and cassette tapes, what is your take on minivans?

Guy: I actually think they are great as a product manager because they are a seventh or eighth generation product that is super clear whom they're for and doesn't try to be for anybody else. We had one once and I was like, this is an amazing car for the thing it's trying to do.

Adam: Yeah.

Guy: Which always, I must admit, confuses me a little bit when they, they try to be like super cool or, big engine.

I'm like, that's not the job you're trying to do.

Adam: I love that you approached this from a Product management point of view and perspective. Minivans get a plus one from you in that perspective. Guy, that's it for rapid fire. I so appreciate you taking the time to join me today on Startup Dad, thank you for your candor and talking about your family and your kids and your life.

It was great.

Guy: Adam, it was joyful to talk with you. Thank you for sharing. I hope this is helpful to at least one person out there. And if anybody wants to talk shop about this, I'd be delighted to.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Intellimise co-founder and CEO, Guy Yalif. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review. It'll help other people find this podcast. Startup Dad is a Fishman AF production with editing support from Tommy Herron.

You can also stay up to date on my thoughts on growth, product and parenting by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter.com. Thank you for listening.