Fixing The Mess Of Summer Camp Planning | Greg Laughlin (Dad of 2, founder of Campwing)

[00:00:00] Greg: It's lovely working from home where they can see it and they come in here and you know, June will help out occasionally or we have dressed up a giant stuffed bear into a suit.

And Sadie often comes in and berates him for not finding enough summer camps for kids. So everybody's sort of doing their part. It's a real family business around here.

[00:00:20] Adam: You've got beta testers, you've got the office manager.

[00:00:24] Greg: Middle management.

[00:00:25] Adam: Yeah. You Middle management. Oh man. 6-year-old middle manager. I love that.

Greg: That’s right.

Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. If you're like most parents, the impending doom of summer vacation and summer camps is right around the corner. Where I live, summer camp planning can start as early as January.

A full six months before our kids are done with school. To get a deeper perspective on this in today's conversation, I sat down with Greg Laughlin. Greg is the founder of CampWing, a new marketplace that simplifies summer camp planning for parents. They're available today in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle.

Prior to CampWing, Greg was the co-founder of StatWing, a statistical analysis product he sold to Qualtrics that became their Stats IQ product. He's a husband and the father of two daughters. In our conversation, we spoke about all things summer camp, why equitable access to summer activities are so important.

The biggest problems for parents in finding and evaluating camps, what problems camping is trying to solve today, and tips for busy parents everywhere for winning the battle. With summer, we dove into some of the most surprising things Greg has learned about being a dad and the number one piece of advice he'd share with younger Greg.

Get your health in order. This is something that every dad should be aware of, but not in the ways you might think. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Greg Laughlin.

Welcome Greg Laughlin to the Startup Dad Podcast. Greg, I could not be more excited to have this conversation with you today. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:17] Greg: Thank you. I am pleasantly excited and mildly anxious. Let's do it.

[00:02:21] Adam: It's how I feel at the start of every episode. So here we go. You, sir, are the founder of a new company that I think a lot of parents who listen to this program will benefit from, and that is a company called CampWing. That's the word, camp and wing. We're gonna spend a lot of time on summer camp today, which is my least favorite topic, but should be very helpful for folks.

But before we get into that and camping, what was your professional life like before you did CampWing?

[00:03:00] Greg: Sure. So I started out in nonprofit, worked at a place, the Center for Effective Philanthropy. It was sort of an offshoot of consultancy. Great place. Love the leaders there, taught me to be a professional, good place to start out to where I met my wife as well, Amy, who will talk about later, I'm sure.

Moved from there into startup land, joined a couple startups. None of them like totally worked out, but I learned a lot. Met my friend John, one of those, and started a company with him. So that was StatWing started in 2012. We did Y Combinator and really struggled for quite some time.

Our batch included. Dropbox and Instacart. And then it also included a lot of people who were sort of smart enough to just kind of call it quits after a year where we did the, like, ramen profitable for four years thing because we believed. That left me with some like genuine scar tissue around.

You know, stories I tell myself about, I'm terrible at marketing, I'm terrible at sales, I'm terrible at fundraising. Which I'm sort of learning maybe I'm not actually quite so terrible at those things. That was just a hard product to sell. People are a lot more interested in summer camps than they are in statistical analysis tools.

I did some fundraising for buying a fourth tier English football club last year and turned out like, oh, I can fundraise. It just has to be a lot more fun than data analysis software. And this can work. So I did that. We, you know, built a cool product, but not really a cool business which is, you know, on me and ended up getting acquired by Qualtrics.

They had an office up here in Seattle, which is why I'm now up here in Seattle. And at some point left there, which is to say I was laid off which was a fun experience, but I probably would've laid me off too. I was down to one day a week at that point, and it was fine. It was probably time to go.

And then the tail end of that, I had started playing around a little with AI writing scripts and r which is a stats programming language, and saw like, oh, I can sort of code now with this, or at least I can build things, even if I can only half code. And that ultimately turns into CampWing which is what I'm at now.

[00:05:10] Adam: Okay. Well I have two follow ups from that. The first is What's with the Wing moniker? You seem to like naming things with Wing. Is there anything behind that or is that just, Hey, it sounded great?

[00:05:24] Greg: It was such a terrible experience to name StatWing and I ended up liking that name.

[00:05:29] Adam: I love that name by the way,

[00:05:31] Greg: I think it's kind of fun, right wing. It's like fluid, fast, fun. Like, Hey, this is nice. It's a good feeling, you know? It's delightful. And there's nothing, my wife hated more than us talking about names.

And it's also like, you can't bring data to bear on that question, really. You just gotta come up with something. So then once I had that, I was like, oh, this is great. I never have to think of a name again. It's gonna be the thing. And then name. Done. Camp Wing, the actual, and also technically it's an LLC called Wing DBA Camp Wing.

'Cause I wasn't sure what I would work on when I started it.

[00:06:02] Adam: It seems like maybe the next move is for you to start an airline or something like that. But um, my second question is you kind of buried the lead there. Fourth tier English soccer team that you tried to, would tried to bring to the US what you tried to buy it?

[00:06:19] Greg: I've got a couple friends who were all American soccer players. One's from the uk, another does real estate stuff in New York, and there was sort of, a pitch around, Hey, we can buy a fourth tier club, develop the land around it, and have sort of sustainable advantage over the other clubs.

Now this is like, probably not the best financial use of anybody involved time. But it seemed really fun and I like getting excited about things. So I just got really excited about this. And so there was sort of four of us who were really pushing it hard and we did succeed in raising the money. We raised $2 million in $25,000 increments, which was a slaw.

And then ultimately after like a really incredible experience that involved lovely mancunian accents, skullduggery conflicts of interest, like people lying to us and just lots of fun. We ended up getting beat out by a bid from a billionaire from the area who said, I'm gonna buy the team and donate it back to the community which was hard to compete with. So.

[00:07:20] Adam: I mean, unfair.

[00:07:21] Greg: Still happy for them. Yeah, it's unfair. We, you know, we're still pulling for Rochdale. Yeah.

[00:07:26] Adam: Billionaires, they just ruin everything, don't they?

[00:07:28] Greg: Yeah. Yeah. Donating it back to the community. Gosh.

[00:07:31] Adam: Yeah. Giving it back to the community. Unbelievable. But you do now have fodder for a great Netflix special behind the scenes of buying the fourth tier English soccer team. 

[00:07:42] Greg: That's right. We briefly looked at a club also. 'Cause we're not done. We still might come back to this. That was actually situated in the city that Ted Lasso was filmed in. We're like, oh, this is almost too perfect.

[00:07:54] Adam: That's awesome. Wait, so after you raise, I'm sorry that I know this is a parenting podcast, but I just gotta stick on this soccer thing for a second. So after you raise $2 million and then you lose the bid, do you just give all that money back?

[00:08:08] Greg: We gave it right back. That was part of the fundraise. If we lose the bid, you get the money back. I'll come pitch you again in a year or two when we have another opportunity. It turns out. It's actually not hard to find a lot of opportunities in this world. There's plenty of people who realize after a few years that this is a really poor decision and they're bleeding cash and would like to get out.

We are like the Arrested Development meme of, you know, it never works out for anybody, but maybe for us, it'll work out.

[00:08:33] Adam: Well, speaking of things working out, you grew up in the burbs, you said suburbia, USA is where you're from. So that could be any town outside of major city. I myself also grew up in the burbs. And you described yourself to me as extraordinarily lucky. What do you mean by that?

[00:08:54] Greg: Absolutely. I mean, I think you're already winning a lottery ticket to be born in a, you know, a developed country or highly developed country, an economically rich country. And then on top of that growing up outside of Kansas City, my parents are, you know, lovely, great humans who I, I still make decisions occasionally based on like.

What would my mom think of that? Would that be okay? Like, I've got this idea for a gambling startup, but I'll never do it because I'm pretty confident she wouldn't like it. And then I had great siblings, I still hang out with them all the time. Good friends from back there, still friends. So just won that lottery.

And then, you know, grew up upper middle class had whatever opportunities were available to me you know, was sort of a nerdy, kind of smart kid or whatever. And it's not like I earned that, you know, I didn't choose my parents. I didn't choose my genes I didn't choose any of this stuff at all. Just kind of happened.

And I'm just, you know, thankful that I get to have this lovely life and very appreciative of it. And I try to keep that, top of mind for both myself and my kids, that like, you can enjoy this and be happy about it, but don't really think you deserve it necessarily. Like, or at least not more so than somebody who grew up in Kenya and just did not have these same opportunities that we had.

They could well be smarter and harder working than you and not have better outcomes.

[00:10:26] Adam: Yeah. Well we are gonna get to your family here in a second, but I wanted to ask you, what did mom think about buying the soccer team?

[00:10:36] Greg: You know, she's very supportive. I was slightly concerned about that, but she's like, that sounds pretty fun. Go for it. You

[00:10:42] Adam: De Definitely more in favor of that than possibly the gambling

[00:10:46] Greg: Yeah. I don't think that would've gone well. Yeah. Her listening to this will be the first time she's heard about the gambling one, but I didn't do it, even though I think it's a good idea. Social gambling. You do it together.

[00:10:55] Adam: Sure. You're gonna get a phone call from mom after this, or an email or some out a text message.

[00:11:00] Greg: A very lengthy text is actually

[00:11:02] Adam: Very, lengthy text

[00:11:03] Greg: Is the preferred medium.

[00:11:04] Adam: Text. Okay. Well, tell me about your family. Now. You've got a partner, you mentioned her name earlier, Amy, and then two kids. How did you and Amy meet each other?

[00:11:15] Greg: Yeah. So we met at work at that first job. The initial meeting was that she confused me for the actual leader of the organization, which was a strange mistake to make because I looked like I was 12 at that point. And we were assigned to work on a project together, and it was kind of like Greg, show Amy this thing you built which was perfect.

And I actually just generally think a workplace is a fantastic place to meet a partner because you're working on projects together. And so much of parenting is just being a team and working on projects and being able to be sort of, you know, professional in your feedback almost. And so I think that was a pretty, you know, solid foundation for what turns out to be a series of very difficult projects.

Two of which are named June and Sadie. They're aged nine and six and they are absolutely lovely. So we met in Boston and, you know, my initial conditions for us staying together is we gotta get to San Francisco. I missed it at that point 'cause I went to college around there.

And you see, you know, no disrespect, Boston's a great place in many regards, but you see more middle fingers in a week in Boston than like a year in San Francisco. And it's just not quite my vibe. And then I also sort of insisted that she at least like Radiohead which that works out. And then she had some sort of like conditions for me that were not spoken, but implicitly was your life will be organized to a degree that you did not think possible and probably would not prefer for the rest of all time.

Very early on, it was a Friday and she's like, so what are you doing this weekend? I was like I, I don't know. Like, let's see. And she's like, what this is? Huh? Huh. Okay. So that has changed a bit. But yeah we get along well and you know, I love those little goblins, my kiddos.

[00:12:56] Adam: Yeah. She's like, I'll tell you what you're doing this weekend 'cause I’ve got it all planned out for you.

[00:12:59] Greg: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I got an answer.

[00:13:02] Adam: Radio, we're gonna listen to Radiohead for 60 minutes, then we're gonna do all these other things.

All right. Well, it's good to know that the only two requirements that you had were, we have to move across the country and also you have to like this band that I like.

[00:13:14] Greg: Yeah. I don't think it's too hard an ask. I think it's fine. I think, you know, the bigger ask is like generally tolerating me that also is left implicit. So here we are.

[00:13:24] Adam: Still together. All right. So Amy worked at this nonprofit with you and then she was a software engineer. Right? And then now she is primarily a stay at home mom. And I think she made that call during the pandemic, like so many parents did, especially moms. What was that conversation like when she left her job during the pandemic?

How did the two of you decide on that?

[00:13:52] Greg: Yeah, I believe it was in this room and she came in and was like, I need to quit. This is real. It's real bad. It wasn't that hard to actually make that decision, but the things that got us there were tough. You know, first of all, she had left the non-profit consulting world, did a coding bootcamp.

Obviously a very smart person gets hired by Dropbox, you know, which is quite the place to get hired from. And so it put a lot into that. I think Dropbox is a challenging place to start out. You're working on a huge code base. It's not quite as fun as like just building, you know, kind of a new thing from scratch.

So that was always challenging, you know, she was good at it. But we were all sort of overwhelmed during the pandemic and. I'm guessing I'm gonna bleed together a couple stories here, but I did a pretty poor job of being a husband during the pandemic. I was working on this project with professor Emily Oster an economist at a Brown, which I'm sure you're familiar.

She's sort of all over the parenting world and deeply impressive human and it felt very important to me. It was about understanding the spread of covid in schools. And I do think it, it had an impact, but I let that become the only thing you know, and I was like, I'm sure you can handle everything else.

I'm working on this important thing, which was not a good, it's not a good answer. That's not really the right approach to almost anything. To take that exclusion of being a good husband and father and just sort of, you know, assume she would pick up the rest. So I'm sure that was actually part of what made everything so overwhelming.

But then by the time we you know, got to the actual point of making that decision, we were just in such bad shape that it was fairly clear that things had to change and that seemed like a reasonable approach. And we were lucky to be in the financial situation from the acquisition that, you know, we knew that we could do that and we would be okay and sort of get through it.

So not a super fun part of our lives. But I think that was true for about everybody. So hard to complain.

Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that too, because I think many folks have maybe have forgotten how challenging it was with young kids and a global pandemic and being stuck at home and however many ands you throw on top of that.

Greg: And it's, It's really relevant to my life now also because I need to not make that same mistake. You know, doing the startup thing is sort of all consuming. And so it's okay if it's all consuming of the things I like to do. And I, you know, don't get to play as much golf as I'd like.

It's not okay if that then all consumes, you know, the family life and I'm not there for my kids. So, I guess, you know, that's the silver lining is sort of, taking that out of the experience.

[00:16:34] Adam: Well, we will come back to work-life balance and hustling to start a company. But let's get us there. I want to talk about summer camp.

[00:16:44] Greg: Yeah, let's

[00:16:45] Adam: The reason that I discovered you and also invited you on this show, I. So I live in the Bay Area. You at some point in time, lived in the Bay Area. And you can probably appreciate if you live in the Bay Area like me or probably any place with incredibly driven, very type A parents.

And you have school aged kids. You've been thinking about summer camp since, oh, I don't know, January of this year. And most people who don't have kids or have very young kids would be like summer camp in January. That sounds crazy. And yet here we are.

It is in fact not crazy. So tell me a bit about CampWing and then we're gonna dive into some summer camp stuff.

[00:17:29] Greg: Sure. Yeah. So, I had left Qualtrics forcibly at the end of, I guess not last year, the year before, and was sort of looking for things to do, and Amy had sent out a list of maybe 50 URLs of summer camps to our class, and people responded like, this is incredible. Like, I can't believe how, like, this is so useful.

I was like, oh. We should probably be able to do better than this. Like this feels like a problem. This is the best we can do. Or I rather, I would like to think that's what I said. And actually what happened is our friend Beth said, Greg, you should work on this. Like, oh, actually you're right. I probably should work on, I that's a good idea.

I will find out later. She was right. But it seems so far like she was right. And so I hurried up and got some together quickly last year. And the goal is to have just a super thorough real database of these camps. So our, you know, Corpus of summer camps, we got about 2,500 camps across SF LA and Seattle areas.

And we're trying to have every single one. We've got the vast majority of 'em, people still tell me about ones that I don't quite have and it hurts a little bit inside, but we're adding 'em and then we try to get really good data on 'em. So the full schedule, and do they have financial aid available? Do they offer refunds?

And just get that all in sort of one place, one, you know, interface that feels modern and you can type to search and use these filters and say, I need a camp that goes from nine to five on this week, and I want one of these kinds of camps. And I've done usability tests with my daughter, June who gets in there and types animals real quick.

And I found herself a camp and I was like, okay, this is good. I think it's working. You know, she can use it. And so that is sort of, you know, the initial thought on it is just get all that data together and, you know, now I've spent a lot more time with it and just sort of letting things percolate in here.

First of all, I think there's some real meaning here, which I didn't really know or think much about summer camps. I do need my work to feel like it has at least, you know, some meaning to it. And initially I was like, ah, I don't know, whatever.

I'm just like helping save parents a little time. But I think that was not quite fair to the scale of the problem. One, it's a huge amount of time. It is a massive amount of time that parents need to spend getting all this information together and coordinating with people and getting applications into camps.

It is a pretty inequitable system, especially if you think of that amount of time. It's just a lot easier to come by if you have you know, a stay at home parent or even just two parents at all. You know, it's much harder if you don't have those things. And then I think the whole system is kind of broken.

It's just very hard to find all this camp information. And then on top of that, there's not really a good rigorous way to understand which of these camps are, you know, better than which other ones. I haven't run across any camps. I'm like, ah, they're doing a bad job. But then occasionally you run across one that's like, Ooh, this is really cool.

And I think the market here is sort of inefficient for information reasons. You only engage in it a handful of times and there's no rating or review system in the only real way you can find out about, you know, the effectiveness of these camps is just asking people basically for their feedback, casting a wide net, talking to parents.

And so one should expect that, that would mean that there's a lot of really good camps out there that aren't sort of being financially rewarded for whatever extra effort that they're putting in. And whatever outcomes they're producing for the kids. And, you know, we know from academic research that this stuff really does matter.

I think if you explain to an alien that nine months of the year kids spend at school. And we constantly debate it in our politics and research it and think about it a lot. And it's a huge, weighty, impactful decision. The other three months is like, I don't know. Here's some camps. Go to grandma's and play with the iPad.

But from research we know that there's a study, I'm blanking on the name, Baltimore School Study, summer study, something like that. Upwards of half of the difference in outcomes by the end of elementary school between lower income and upper income kids is due to the summer slide. So kids everywhere get a little bit worse at math over summer, but lower income kids who don't have as much access to these kinds of opportunities gets significantly worse. And then upper income kids get better at reading over the summer. Lower income kids get worse. And again, a lot of this has to do with just what you're doing during the summer.

Now it's not, of course, exclusively summer camps, also the things you're doing around the house, but summer camps can play a pretty significant role in that. And so I think there is a lot of meaning and I think there's a lot of opportunity to both help parents just do this much more efficiently and much more easily and help kids have sort of better experiences by rewarding the better camps that are out there.

And then for the camps themselves, you know, I'm sort of starting to sell these advertising deals and it seems to work, you know, when they place an ad and they've got pictures and a little message, they get more traffic. And so it's a way that even kind of small camps can say, oh yeah, we'll put our hat in the ring there and see if we can get a little more attention and get some folks.

And so this feels like one of those things where hopefully there's not really any losers involved here. It's just that solve the information problems and make it a little bit better for everybody.

[00:22:49] Adam: Yeah, I had the founder and her husband actually of Winnie on this show a while back. And, you know, Winnie's solving this problem for childcare. So like the day to day majority of the year. And it sounds like you're somewhat solving a similar problem, but for that summer slide or that summer period.

[00:23:08] Greg: Yeah, that's the goal. And I am interested in keeping this problem small and tractable. Like I am not trying to build a VC fundable startup. I don't really actually think it would be VC fundable. I don't think it's a big enough market. But I think it could be a really great lifestyle business. And I think, you know, the hundred million in revenue that a VC needs to have this as a good outcome and, you know, the several hundred thousand dollars that I need to be like, this is great.

You know, I'm doing it perfectly. This is all the money you ever need. There's a huge gap there. That I think, probably a lot of other people I'm hoping are gonna start other little companies like this to just solve little problems and try to keep it small and just sort of do it well.

[00:23:49] Adam: Love that. So I heard kind of three primary problems that parents wrestle with and this resonated quite a bit with me. One is. The general availability of information, including like affording camps. One thing that I think some people don't necessarily appreciate, especially maybe more privileged people like ourselves is camp is really frigging expensive.

When you stack up two kids or however many kids doing scheduled activities for eight to 10 weeks of the summer, like, that's expensive. So that's one - evaluating them and like against each other and like there's no rating system and then this last one, this last problem is one that like I will be so happy for you to solve eventually, which is the idea of the application system is fundamentally broken. I remember it's a little easier as your kids get older and if you have a centralized, like booking, our town happens to have a recreation department and you can book stuff through that, but that's pretty rare. But earlier, before we had this resource and before something like CampWing you had to like, fill out a different form for every camp and the information is like 98% similar between camps and they all use a different system, like a backend or whatever.

And like, oh man, the number of times where I was like, could we just do this once? Like, could this be like the universal application for college admissions where like one set of information, send it to all these places?

[00:25:25] Greg: Yeah, and you left out, you have to like be awake at midnight uh, for when the application opens for the really hard to get in ones which is not super fun. Several people have suggested like, you should do like a concierge service where it, you know, signs people up for you. I'm like, yeah, it sounds a little icky.

I don't know if I can like, I don't really wanna take people's money to have them cut in line for now we have to all deal with the pain. you know, the first problem feels really tractable getting all the information together, and you know, I think financial aid, again, this feels like a nice opportunity for, meaning there are plenty of places that have financial aid.

40% of the camps in Seattle, about 25% of the camps in SF and LA offer financial aid and scholarships, but it's often a bit buried and you can go to a few of these things and just get a little disheartened. You don't see it on the first couple. And I think actually that information problem works a couple ways because some cities like Seattle offer some kind of funding to these organizations to be able to offer scholarships and that money would come from the city.

But a lot of these camps don't necessarily know about that either. So if we can sort of help them with the information piece. And then the hardest one is certainly gonna be the application thing. I've started floating this already with some of the camps that I work with. Like, can we get on some kind of like, there's this one week where we all do it.

That's a tougher one. I don't wanna make any huge promises, but it's certainly a goal of mine is to like, can we just do something more rational? Just something where we get everybody together and see if we can come up with a plan, you know? And I'd like to be in a place you know, with CampWing where we're viewed as sort of a helpful resource for all these camps and with a little bit of sort of soft power to say like, Hey, can we get together and, you know, try something.

'Cause they're all aware of that problem too, and nobody's like trying to get advantage out of it. It's just sort of the mechanics of their businesses. But there might be a way that, you know, I would be a convener here and they would come up with the solutions.

[00:27:23] Adam: It's a little bit of a collective action problem. Like everyone's kind of gotta get on the same page. Maybe they need a little push from you to get there, but hopefully there's something that works out to their benefit because man, it would help a lot of parents.

[00:27:36] Greg: Yeah. What I'd love to do is just be like, I'll give you a third off of whatever, you know, CampWing ad stuff, if you get onto this common thing which is the lovely part about, you know, not taking VC money. Like I could just decide like, whatever I'll take it. Like, who cares? I'll take in a bill as money and solve this problem, and that would feel great.

That would be, you know, the psychic benefit to me would be worth it, assuming this thing gets off the ground. Obviously not in position to do that yet.

[00:28:03] Adam: Well, we all gotta start somewhere, so I'm excited that this is out there. And this will be your, this is your first summer camp run-ish?

[00:28:12] Greg: Yeah, basically we sort of had a little up and running last year and credit where it's due. By the way, I keep saying we, it is not purely me. I have a colleague in Nigeria, Opmi, who is fantastic, and I just so lucky to have come across her. It, I have some thoughts on, I don't know how to make that kind of thing work.

But she disagrees with me all the time and is routinely like certainly in December, unless you're like Greg, I know building the products real fun for you, but like, dude marketing, you need to get on the marketing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, you're right. So, so that's why I'm saying we is because of her.

Hopefully we'll get there.

[00:28:46] Adam: So you know CampWing's only in SF, Seattle and LA currently. Hopefully. It'll be in a lot more cities over time, but hey you're bootstrapping this thing. So, you know…

[00:29:00] Greg: Yeah, yeah. Aiming to go national next year. I think a lot of it is just a data collection problem, and I think given enough time, I think we can do that. And just to be super clear, it's sort of the areas around SF, LA Seattle and it just, you know, so it's probably within an hour drive. We got most of them.

[00:29:18] Adam: Okay. So for parents who are listening to this year where a CampWing's not necessarily available in their town or, you know, coming soon, get ready for it, folks, what advice do you have for parents on figuring out the complex matrix of camps that exist

[00:29:35] Greg: Yeah.

[00:29:35] Adam: out there?

[00:29:36] Greg: And this is true. Even, you know, CampWing does not solve all ills yet. Even if you're in Seattle, this is still true. And I'm thinking of this advice as sort of directed towards, you know, a parent where their oldest kid is in kindergarten or something like that. They're kind of new to it.

I think, you know, number one, gird your loins, like, it's gonna be unpleasant. So like, hopefully that cushions the blow to know that you know, two, I think other parents are currently the best resource available for understanding, you know, which of these camps would be a good fit for your kid. And, you know, you can click on CampWing, read the website stuff. But it really pales in comparison to getting a review from a parent. And in my experience, people are very willing to share that information. So it's like starting a thread on WhatsApp or whatever with your class. Hey, is anybody any of these and what are your favorite camps?

People love to talk about the favorite camps and stuff like that and are quite happy to share that stuff. I've also been to a couple of these fairs, coast to coast camp fairs. They run little camp fairs in every city, and I think it's really well done, really useful. You just see 30 camps and just talk to 'em. You know, you just get a vibe, you get a sense, you get a sort of feel. Does this make sense? More sort of tactical tips. It's all about the refunds baby. Anything that gives refunds, it just start there is, you can book that in January and you can change a plan later. That data is, that's one of the first things parents ask me to put on CampWing.

What are all the refund policies? I wanna filter by, you know, refunds equals yes. So that's a critical one. And then the actual, you know, the January thing is, it probably is good advice to start thinking about it in January, unfortunately, but some of them book up and coordinating with other parents to get your kids in the same camps is quite challenging.

But I would also note that like, it's fine too if you don't, if you look at the Google search traffic around summer camps, the zenith of the search traffic is May and June. Plenty of folks at the end talking to various camps right now, about a third of spots get booked by this time in the year. So, you know, if you're like me and a little less organized than some other folks, it's okay.

It's fine. You know?

[00:31:51] Adam: Give yourself a little grace. Not everybody's booking in January.

[00:31:54] Greg: That's right. The world. It's stuff is hard. This is hard. It's okay. Be easy.

[00:32:01] Adam: One of the things we've done, I don't know if this has been your experience pre-CampWing, but or maybe current experience or Amy's experience too. We always do like a spreadsheet for the class. So like, man, we are living in Google Sheets and you've got like the different grades and the week by week and which kid's gonna be where.

And my youngest who is 10, just a bit older than yours, has entered the phase where he actually doesn't care what camp he does as long as he is there with some friends. So that if we put him in a camp, could be the most fun thing he's ever done in his life. But if there isn't at least one friend there we're toast.

We're getting feedback for days and weeks and he is gonna hold onto that memory for years and let us know about it, so.

[00:32:43] Greg: Yeah, yeah, that's totally right. Those spreadsheets are a way of life. In the Summer camp hunt, I have tried to build into some CampWing, something that, you know, sort of custom made for this, and maybe I'll get there eventually, but right now people are, you know, they've been using those spreadsheets for years.

It's hard to take 'em out of people's hands. And I, I respect that, you know, that's fine. And the other infuriating part about the summer camp hunt is that is apparent. You look at these camps and you're like. I want to do these. I wanna go do climbing for a week, space camp, great, arts and crafts.

I'd l like, this is incredible. And then your kid is gonna be like, yeah, I wanna play on the iPad. Like, oh, it's, oh, you're killing me smalls. This is so, yeah.

[00:33:31] Adam: Coding with Scratch. I wish I had that when I was a kid. Not these kids. No. So, okay, well that's good advice. Especially the gird your loins and prepare yourself 'cause it's gonna be painful. Regardless. Alright, that's camp. I'm sure we'll revisit camp 'cause I do want to come back and ask you some stuff about building CampWing.

before that I wanna ask you what some of the more surprising things that you've discovered as a dad are? This could be camp related or not.

[00:34:00] Greg: Yeah. For me. I think you learn a lot about humans generally by watching kids. You know, in part they're not as deft as we are at sort of hiding the ways that they try to protect their ego or something. You know, you can watch them you know, you might say like, take a sharpie to a weather map to say no, in fact that hurricane was gonna go through Alabama. And you're like, oh yeah, that's like what a 5-year-old would do. I was a little off topic. Apologize for that one.

[00:34:31] Adam: That's a deep cut for some people. But I was there with you. I know what you're talking about.

[00:34:36] Greg: You know, kids are like not as good at it and you can sort of see how, oh, like a lot of things that people do to kind of be nice to each other might have come out of we're onions, and over time we add layers on top that sort of hide some of our base air motivations, possibly even from ourselves. So that's kinda a small thing about humans. The more important one, the bigger one, is just how, like shockingly baked in a lot of elements of personality and temperament seem to be.

So we've had two girls and, you know, raised 'em in the same house, in the same city, and they're super different. The first one, you know, from right out the womb there was like me and the amniotic fluid and she didn't sleep great. And some anxiety issues.

And then the second one just like slept like a baby, which that is a terrible phrase. I don't even know why people say that, but you know, slept so well. And I think if we had two kids who were like June, we would've been like, oh my God, we're so bad at this baby stuff, like, what's wrong with us? And if we'd had two kids like Sadie, we would be like, God, what's everybody complaining about?

Like, this is so easy. Now. They both got their challenges over time. It's not that Sadie has remained consistently easy or that June has remained consistently hard. But that was just so different. And from, you know, literally like the moment of birth onwards, they had these things and they've turned into sort of reliable parts of their temperament and personality where, you know, both of my kids kind of have two sides of a neurodiverse coin where you know, June has some anxiety issues and had more of them as a kid. Like she and us. We've all sort of worked to overcome them and made a lot of progress, but, you know, it'll always sort of be there in the back. And you can see I'm a little off topic now, but you can sort of see like the bad side of it is it makes it tough, you know, it's hard to go to a birthday party at a new place, or at least it used to be.

The flip side of that is like, that sensitivity comes with like a really deep empathy and kindness and, you know, just sort of, thoughtfulness about other people. And then, Sadie doesn't really have any of those issues. She has ADHD and has all sort of the standard things that make life a little bit harder when you have that.

The flip side is she's super creative and silly and ridiculous. She's not one for decorum. And, you know, I'm most proud of my kids when they're funny and they're kind, and like they're both that, but, you know, they specialize. I would say, you know, one and the other, and it just has nothing to do with us, you know, like.

We're here to help them along. And I like professor Alison Gonick, the gardening metaphor as a parent, like, you're not changing their fundamental ma, you're not a carpenter. You're not shaping them. You're just giving them sort of a nice environment to grow. And I think it can, you know, both give a nice sense of humility around what really you did as a parent and also maybe a little bit of freedom of like, this is not all about you, or something.

Like they're kind of gonna be who they're gonna be to a degree. You know, and then, and also I definitely learned about myself in that process too. So both anxiety and ADHD are quite prevalent in my family. And, the anxiety stuff. I wouldn't sort of thought of myself that way, but one of the issues June had as a little kid was some sort of sensory processing disorders where, you know, certain clothes would feel really uncomfortable.

And I was like, oh, I totally get it. I remember crying as a kid when like, my mom made me wear jeans or this Spider-Man Halloween costume, but we didn't have words for that, you know, back then. And now we do. And it's like, oh, that's what that was. You know, that, that makes sense. That's kind of interesting to see.

So yeah, it's just, it's, it is a fascinating window on what it is to be a human to, to raise these little monsters.

[00:38:26] Adam: And how, I think you mentioned how little control we as parents actually have over like the basics, the fundamental nature of our kids. Yeah. I love the gardening metaphor. I will link to that author's study or book on that. 'Cause it's totally true. You know, you just gotta kind of like prune and let some sunlight in and cover it, you know, from time to time.

And that's kinda all you can do. So if you think about telling other parents who are, you know, let's say you're nine, 10 years ago and you are thinking about kids and you bump into today, Greg what advice would you give to younger Greg? What advice would you have for other parents around things that you've learned since you've had your kids?

[00:39:17] Greg: Yeah, I don't generally find that I have tons of advice for most parents, but I would have a ton of advice for Greg 10 years ago. And, you know, specifically it would be to get health stuff in order. You know, I think I thought of health as a long-term thing and long term was not that interesting to me.

You know, pretty short term oriented. I didn't sort of understand that being healthier meant being like happier today, being a better parent today, being a better husband today, being a better professional today. So in my case I had low testosterone and it was a journey figuring this out. So I was just sort of tired and sad.

A lot. I would wake up in the morning and literally look at my calendar, say, when can I take a nap today? I would schedule it out. And so there was a specific closet in the Seattle office of Qualtrics that I would sneak off to and get a half hour nap in that I don't think people knew about, but it's like a little unclear, I suppose I should really ask at some point.

And at some point, you know, I took a battery of tests and the testosterone one thankfully came in at the 2.4 percentile. And you know, I'll skip ahead for a second, which is that I think testosterone has sort of a bad brand. It's thought of as, you know, like men being dicks. But I was way more impatient.

And a far worse husband and father when I hadn't had that fixed. I also have a pet theory that there's enough angry men out there because of this condition to have actual, like, political impacts on the world. And so, what I would've told me is maybe don't go to a doctor, go to a functional doctor.

My experience of the very, mainstream western approach to this is that it's deeply flawed. So tests for any kind of hormone, pretty much anything that isn't like insulin or, you know, the critical heart stuff, cholesterol stuff, those are all graded on a curve. They get a corpus of, in this case a thousand men and they get their testosterone levels.

And if you're below the 2.5 percentile, which is two standard deviations, you have a problem, it's red. If you're above it, you're fine. It's in the green. And this is problematic for a couple reasons. One, my first reading was 2.4 and I was still, Hey, you might have this problem. We need to do another reading, though the other one came at the 2.6 percentile and she was like, oh, you're fine.

You don't have a problem. I was like, no, that's not correct.

[00:41:35] Adam: Basic statistical analysis would say that is not the way to read those results.

[00:41:40] Greg: Yeah. And that is the dominant paradigm. That is the way that they're taught to look at this stuff. And they just kind of follow it. Which not everybody, but enough that it's a pretty significant problem. The second problem is that these numbers have drifted downwards in a really significant fashion over time.

So in 2021 when they did the study that a lot of these are based off of a lot of these numbers. The 2.5 percentile was at 250 when that previous study or the, that same basic study had been done 10 years ago. 2.5 was at 300, sorry, this is a scale from roughly 300 to a thousand. So it had shifted such that somebody who would've been in, you know, the red in 2011.

Many people, 1%, 2%. And this is a lot of people, when you multiply that by a country or a globe would then be considered green and like, Hey, you're totally fine. And there's significant evidence that it actually, this has been true for decades. That there is, you know, what I would term like an epidemic that I think is sort of quiet, that people don't notice.

Where you can make a very plausible argument that something like 10% of men are walking around with a level of testosterone that in 1950 would've been viewed as clinically problematic. And I think this matters a lot in the world. And I, this is sort of my little, you know, trying to give back 'cause I feel like it's, it's one of the most important things that's ever happened to me. Getting that fixed just dramatically changed my life and trying to help other people go through that same journey. And it's very frustrating because if you're in that position, the last thing you really wanna do is like, schedule doctor appointments and, you know,

[00:43:18] Adam: You could be napping. You could be napping.

[00:43:20] Greg: Could be napping.

[00:43:21] Adam: Instead you gotta go to the doctor.

[00:43:22] Greg: Yeah. And so my experience has been the people who think about this in the most nuanced fashion, and don't laugh you out of the room for saying, I'm tired and sad. Can I do a blood test? Are functional doctors. So that's what I would encourage meant to look into if they feel more tired and sad than they should.

[00:43:40] Adam: Yeah. And I think a lot of dads will come on the show or just in general and be like, oh, you gotta get in shape before you have a kid. And they think like, oh, I'm gonna hit the gym, I gotta eat right. I gotta lose 10 pounds or whatever, because that goes out the window, you know? But you're talking about something fundamentally different, which is like, yeah, you can get into physical shape.

Sure. And that's great advice, but you're also talking about being in like the right frame of mind, chemically. And that's often like a less obvious thing to detect, right? Like you, you know, if you're a little overweight. You look at yourself and go I, I probably should stand to lose 10 pounds.

Who among us couldn't in the dad community, but you know, a lot less about something like testosterone level or, you know, which influences your mental health and like all kinds of things. So,

[00:44:28] Greg: Yeah.

[00:44:29] Adam: And your physical health, so.

[00:44:30] Greg: I think people are going to also then understand why they're not working out. So I hated working out 'cause it was just super painful and I didn't have the energy for it. And then once I got on testosterone, it just wasn't that hard. And it was like, oh, this is kind of pleasant. You know, I actually almost like this now.

And so I was like, is it willpower? I mean, I don't know what willpower really means. Yeah, it's hard to get out of any trap if you've got, and it's not just testosterone. It could be cortisol, it could be thyroid stuff, it could be the women's sex hormones as well.

All this stuff, just having a decent sense of it. And we just live in a world that is so distant from our evolutionary past and we do not understand exactly why all these things are going wrong. But they are. And we just gotta try our best to bandaid them.

[00:45:14] Adam: Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. I, I really appreciate it. It's something that I've never had a conversation with another dad about, so good to know.

[00:45:23] Greg: Yeah. And it's, boy, if one person hears this and, you know, does something about it I would be very grateful.

[00:45:29] Adam: Okay, well I'll let you know 'cause I'm sure I'll hear from them.

[00:45:32] Greg: Yeah.

[00:45:33] Adam: Alright. I often ask dads about books that they love to read to their kids, especially kids of your age. They're really like right in the wheelhouse of fantastic reading adventures. However. we will do that. But one thing I learned about you is that you have replaced with your oldest daughter, June, you've replaced book time with something else, which sounds like a very fun game, like puzzle, mental game.

So tell me about what you do with your 9-year-old now. Kind of instead of, or adjacent to book time.

[00:46:10] Greg: Yeah, this is fantastic. And anybody can start doing this with any kid. I do it occasionally with the 6-year-old too, and she does a great job at it. I don't know where we got this from, some podcasts, I'm sure you both say a random word. You just pick it outta nowhere, you know? I guess the one that went the one we're proudest of, or that I'm proudest of maybe is I said football, and she said crow.

And then you're gonna count down from three, or sorry, you say it at the same time and then you count down 3, 2, 1. And at the same time you say your next word and you're trying to say the same word together. But if you don't, if you say two different words, okay, now I try again. And from those two words, it goes on and on and you end up in these like very silly places and you're like, oh, what was the connection there?

It's an exercise in like empathy and vocabulary and context and connection, and what does this person think? I would do, and I'm very proud of that one because while my children generally do not care for sports terribly, football and crow might have even been raven, but we got Baltimore as the next word, which is like, oh I, I was not confident that you knew the Baltimore Ravens, but she does know all the animal mascot football teams at this point.

So I at least made that kind of impact.

[00:47:22] Adam: Yes. Oh, I love, do you have a name for this game or?

[00:47:26] Greg: I don't know what it's probably ha I really should have looked this up before, before I came on. I, it's a fantastic game. You could, you start so quickly and it's super fun. We could also do with three or four people, we do it with family sometimes. It's great.

[00:47:38] Adam: All right. Alright, well maybe we should play around at the end. Uh, No,I’m just kidding.

Greg: I like it.

Adam: we, we, we won't do that.

[00:47:44] Greg: I thought about proposing it was like me. We'll do, I don't know, see how much time we

[00:47:47] Adam: we'll, we'll save that.

[00:47:49] Greg: Spend like 15 minutes, like, oh, this is huge mistake.

[00:47:52] Adam: Also, you mentioned that June knows all of the animal mascots for the teams. And I also think that you said something about her looking up animal camps, so I feel like there's a theme here?

[00:48:03] Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're all about, the animals distantly related side story. I was asking her about school one day and, you know, what'd you do at recess? Kinda curious about like, what's recess culture look like for you? What are you doing? And I was a boy, so I just did sportsy stuff and I don't, you know, I didn't know what the girls were doing as a kid.

Not that the girls aren't also doing sports, but you know, many of them are. Anyway, she was like, oh oh, we played otters. I was like, oh what's otters? How does that work? She goes, we're otters. oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Like half of your life is improv, like role playing games.

It's fantastic. It's just like so fun.

[00:48:40] Adam: Well, of course otters the game is where you're just an otter, and that’s.

[00:48:44] Greg: You're an otter. Yeah. It's pretty straightforward. 

[00:48:47] Adam: pretty, pretty straightforward.

[00:48:48] Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got stuffies out the wazoo. And actually this ties back into the book thing. My favorite books for those kiddos, one, it's just so beautiful is the Richard Scary. I am a bunny, just a bunny talking about being a bunny boy.

That one makes me happy. And then the other one I got an ulterior motive here, but Detective Beans, which of course is a cat but it's a cat child, I guess it's a kitten who wants to be a detective and that doesn't tell you much. Like everybody needs to go buy this book 'cause I want a sequel so bad.

And it's the first book this author has made and I'm reading it and I was like, this is just genuinely hilarious. 

[00:49:26] Adam: Okay. I'm not sure that Detective Beans, definitely the Richard Scary book I am very familiar with. I'm not sure that Detective Beans has made its way into our household, so I gotta look this one.

[00:49:35] Greg: It's a winner. Yeah.

[00:49:36] Adam: Everyone, if you're listening to this, go email the author of Detective Beans and tell him, or her or them to write a sequel to this.

[00:49:46] Greg: Yeah. Best way to send that message is cash. Buy that book my friends.

[00:49:52] Adam: Yes. All right, Detective Beans. We'll link to that in the show notes so people can buy it. Have you developed any particular frameworks or guardrails for parenting that you would share with folks?

[00:50:06] Greg: Yeah. I don't know that I have a framework for the broad thing. Maybe lots of little rules. I think the thing I probably push on the most is if they can do it themselves, they should do it themselves. It is an investment in them being independent people who can just live on their own. And also it's not easier in the moment, but I think it's easier in the medium term.

I think of it as like hungover parenting. You sit on the couch just like pretend you're hungover all the time. Like, can you, can I have cereal? I was like, you can absolutely have cereal. Like go get it. Yeah. Great. Yeah. The power is yours. Other rule of thumb, I like to treat them like they're humans.

You know, like some semblance of sort of, I guess respect for them. You know, like I asked them about whether I could talk about some of these things that we've talked about. Is it okay if I talk about ADHD and anxiety and like. You know, they can make that call. They've got opinions, obviously they're six and nine.

It's not like perfect judgment. But you know, in general, I think it's worth at least trying to treat them that way.

[00:51:12] Adam: Yeah. I love that. I love that you're also, there's possibility of like teaching them a lesson there or educating them about something or like showing them that like, this is a good thing to check in with somebody about when you're talking about you know

[00:51:26] Greg: Right? Yeah,

[00:51:27] Adam: Maybe sensitive personal topics or something like that.

So yeah, love that. Love that. I also love the rule. If they can do it themselves.

So I always ask Dads on the show and when I have moms as well, you know, partnership's so important. And you mentioned you know, that there was a challenge that you had during that period of time leading up to Covid when you're doing that research with Emily and you know, maybe you weren't doing the best job of being a partner, but you've recovered.

And I'm curious you know, what is a thing still that maybe you and your wife don't see eye to eye on when it comes to parenting?

[00:52:07] Greg: You know, inevitably there's gonna be this stuff. This is not a data rich thing. There's plenty of books about parenting of course, but they're not doing randomized controlled trials on this stuff, so there's no like one right answer. I think actually in general, we feel very lucky that we tend to be aligned on the vast majority of stuff.

And so I, you know, sort of a small example, but in, in general we're quite lucky in that way. I think probably, I mean, the most common thing that we, you know, slightly different views on is what we were just talking about with if they can do it themselves, they should do it themselves. So that's my take maybe a little bit more than our take.

I think Amy's take is a little bit more you know, we have to get to the place or we're gonna be late. Like, I'm just gonna put her shoes on. I don't want to be late. And I get that and I would sort of come back with like, yes, but we're always late everywhere. And like, this is an investment in the future.

And it'll pay out over time. And then she would come back with something probably quite clever, but she is not here. So, respectfully. Neener. Neener, Amy.

[00:53:15] Adam: Good that you added the respectfully part though. You know, I can appreciate both perspectives on this one. I kind of vacillate between these two things, but now my kids are older ish. They can mostly do a lot of the basics for themselves. But you know, there was definitely some times there where I and my extreme type A was like, I gotta, we gotta be on time for this.

I'm just gonna tuck you under my arm and those shoes are going on later or whatever. The other thing is, I had a dad on the show recently who said one of the things that you give up when you have kids is just any sense of being on time ever again until they’re grownup.

[00:53:51] Greg: Yeah. Well, so it's actually net positive for me 'cause I was always late everywhere anyway.

[00:53:56] Adam: Now you have an excuse.

[00:53:57] Greg: Yeah. So it's an easy one. Yeah.

[00:53:59] Adam: Yes. Yes. Okay. I love that. so you've, majority of your career has been built in technology. You've founded a couple of businesses, this one and StatWing. I will never forget The Wing. When you think about the relationship that you want your daughters to have with technology as they get older, what is that relationship?

[00:54:22] Greg: Yeah. I mean, I'm very scared about the whole thing. So I'm very compelled by Jonathan Height's work on social media and its negative impact, particularly on girls. I'm less than entirely concerned about screen time generally, like it's a problem and I don't love that. My girls are kind of addicted to their iPads, but I played an insane amount of Nintendo as a kid, and that was not very intellectually stimulating. And like, it's okay, you know, the social media stuff really scares me. And, you know, Jonathan Heightt has some recommendations , that we plan on following and hopefully can find you know, like-minded parents to sort of have these norms together of just not being constantly on the iPhone.

I don't know how often you see like, packs of teenagers out in the wild, but it's like a Black Mirror episode to see them staring down at the screen the whole time and you know, who knows what's going through their minds on it. So I'm real scared about that. I don't have much more than like, of a plan than follow Height’s advice on that one.

And then the more positive one is the AI stuff. You know, I'm also a little scared of that 'cause it just seems to me that it'll be so disruptive. But it's changed my life significantly. There's no way CampWing would exist without the, this new generation, the LLMs. And it feels like being able to use them effectively will be one of the most important skills in the next generation.

So I'm always encouraging them to play with those things and use them just for whatever. And I share an account with June because, you know, I'm a paying subscriber and so she'll use that. And I occasionally get to see little things. Like one of 'em was something like Roblox Money. It's like, oh, check some Roblox, the kids game.

I click into it and she's saying, can you help me hack Roblox to get as many roadblocks as I want? And then it says like, sorry, we can't da. All caps, WORTHLESS. It's like, ah, nice. So yeah, very, very encouraging generally of that stuff. Yeah, I just can't see how it won't get more and more important.

[00:56:19] Adam: Yeah. Yeah. How is it that CampWing wouldn't be possible without LLMs?

[00:56:26] Greg: Yeah, a couple ways. One, I'd never coded anything longer than a, I'm making a hand gesture of a page when, I've never coded anything longer than a little script before camping really. And, you know, I'm not just like sort of blindly vibe coding. I'm asking it questions and learning, and I read every line it writes out and, but there's no way I could get close.

It's very obvious to me that it would've taken me about 10 years to do what I've done in the last, you know, year of working on this stuff. So on a personal level, I couldn't have done it. I also think. Then two, the structuring of the data is a huge challenge. So, every one of these websites that has a camps schedule on it, every summer camp website is totally different and bespoke and often a little challenging to work through.

And the LLMs are really good. It's structuring that data at knowing there's two a troops in two locations and two themes, and that means it's two to a third. There's eight different rows of data. We need one for each of those sessions. They're not perfect and I'm working on it, but I think that has so lowered the cost of gathering this data.

And it would've been so expensive before that you only could have done it with VC investment level money to get that data in the first place or to write all the code to like write custom scrapers or whatever you would even do. And the payoff, I don't think the market's big enough for it to sort of justify VC investment.

And thus you know, I think we're gonna see a lot of people like me, like a product manager who can now build the thing, you know, somewhat technical. I got working on a stats thing before this. It's not like totally outta nowhere, but couldn't code, haven't dedicated my life to that. Solving some small problem well, and I think even if OMS plateaued exactly where they are right now somebody who thinks they never use them is still gonna get significant benefit out of them, sort of secondhand through folks like me solving these little problems.

[00:58:24] Adam: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Love that. And you're right, when I think about not knowing how to code and trying to build what you've built at CampWing that would take a long time. So, I'm

[00:58:33] Greg: Yeah. Most problems are not rocket science. Most problems are not. It's like, am I a tech company? I mean, I guess because we call internet companies, tech companies, but it's not about the tech. I'm not doing anything interesting. It's, you know, it's about the information.

[00:58:49] Adam: What is something that you had to give up to become a dad?

[00:58:53] Greg: You know, freedom, a big one. I used to live my life very differently. Now I can't like up and go to Cabo next weekend if I wanted to or something. Not that I'm terribly interested in Cabo. That's a big one. That hurts a bit. Yeah, I'd like to have more freedom, but here we are. That's life.

Creativity is about constraints or something like that. Some positive spin. Nah, it's just all negative, man. I'd like to have it just, it's a trade off against, it's nice to have kids and they're cute and later they'll hang out with me at Christmas. So yeah, I miss the freedom. And then also my circadian rhythm does not mesh with this life.

I got most of my work done in college between like 5:00 PM and 3:00 AM and that is not a good recipe for raising children. I have this brief dispensation for the last couple months while CampWing is in full swing, where Amy's taking care of the mornings and I can sort of work in a way that is maximally productive for me which I'm very grateful for.

I do. And I get to, you know, work till two and then sleep till eight or nine and then, you know, do it again the next day. And it's just, it fits me a lot better. It's just how I'm built. And I don't think there's any getting over that until they're, I don't know, outta high school or something

[01:00:15] Adam: That's right. That's right. And then they sleep in until noon and you do whatever you want.

[01:00:18] Greg: Right. Yeah. And yeah, lord it over me.

Yeah.

[01:00:21] Adam: What are some ways that you recharge your batteries or center yourself?

[01:00:27] Greg: Yeah. For me it's golf and piano. It's fairly basic actually, but I took some time off, or the last, you know, year or so at Qualtrics was one day a week. So I had plenty of time and I had this huge list of million things I wanted to do. It was like, ah, it'd be great if I could.

I wonder if I was amateurly decent in ventriloquism, like, that'd be great. Nah, I didn't get close. I never made it past the first two items, which were golf and piano. And I would heavily recommend that if anybody is in that situation, they pick piano and not golf. I've never invested more effort in a thing that I, with no perceivable outcome that is positive.

I spent five times as much time on the golf than the piano, and I'm like way better at piano than I am at golf. Like, I'm actually decent at piano and I am not at golf. Is it a recharge? I don't know. I don't even know why I do it. It's just so satisfying when you do it right. But boy is it a nightmare most of the time. Play piano, everybody. It's not that hard. You can just pick it up real fast.

[01:01:26] Adam: Yeah. And did you teach yourself or are you taking lessons? How are you,

[01:01:30] Greg: I take lessons. The golf, I took a couple lessons, but mostly it's me in the backyard. I got a little simulator thing. I love it. I could be out there all day, every day. The piano, I do lessons that actually started because I wanted to sort of do it with June and set an example for her. And then I've played guitar since just outta college and it's, I'm not great at it, but like campfire guitar, that kind of thing.

And I like singing and the piano just really caught me. Like it's just it's laid out in a way that makes sense to me. And you know, you can take that chord shape and you can move it up and down and it's endless opportunities and it just sounds great no matter what. You can't miss finger a fret or something.

So yeah, I do take lessons and my piano teacher is lovely and she can move quickly from working with June to working with me and we're doing very different stuff. And she isn't too mean to me when I don't practice.

[01:02:22] Adam: She doesn't hit you with a ruler or anything on your knuckles. Yeah. Okay. Well, golf and piano. And you would give a lean to piano.

[01:02:30] Greg: Lean to piano, my friends. Yeah.

[01:02:32] Adam: What is a mistake that you've made as a dad? 

[01:02:35] Greg: The vast majority of the top 10 mistakes I've made have to have all just been like being too impatient or too short with the kids getting frustrated, like, you know, it's so obviously not their fault in a grand way. It's your fault. It's nobody's fault. They're just, we're all just bags of chemical reactions walking around with names.

But it's more obvious with a child. And so it feels really stupid to get like upset at them. And so every time I do, I'm just like, God, I'm an idiot. Like this is. It's on me. You know, like, I should have done something in the past that led to them not doing this. So those are most of my regrets is when I get upset at them.

And it used to happen a lot more before the testosterone thing, but even so it still happens now. When I was a kid and my mom would get upset, she would often come, apologize later for sort of , raising your voice too much. And I try to do that too. So I try this as part of treating them as a human, I guess, is to sort of just apologize and just, you know, I, it's not okay.

I could have done something other than raise my voice there. Which I'd like to think has some valuable lessons in it too, both on like, this is how you deal with making mistakes. And also like maybe don't trust authority figures all that much. Like they don't really know what they're doing either.

They're just guessing too.

[01:03:53] Adam: Yep. Getting frustrated is probably the number one thing that I hear on here. I mean, it's probably the number one thing for all parents everywhere. But I don't often hear about the recovery process and that is really good advice and good teaching opportunity for your kids.

[01:04:10] Greg: Yeah. That's half tip to my mom on that one.

[01:04:12] Adam: Yeah. Way to go mom. She's supportive on buying a soccer team, maybe less so on the gambling startup that she's gonna find out from listening to this, but helpful when it comes to learning apology lessons. So way to go mom batting, batting two for three on there. That's pretty good. Okay, last couple questions for you before the lightning round, which I'm very excited for.

How do you feel about startup hustle culture, and especially while you're currently building a company, and how does that fit in with family life?

[01:04:44] Greg: Yeah. I'm not a huge fan of work per se. Like, it's not where I derive most of my meaning in life, and I just assume not really for the most part. That said, I don't, I just don't see how anybody starts anything like this without working crazy hard and hustling and trying to just be scrappy and fight through obstacles and time is the best resource you can throw at it.

Like, I don't love it about it. But I don't know how anybody does it any other way. I guess there's some hyper effective people. I mean, I, maybe if I was better organized. I did notice that a lot of the folks who come on your podcast have like really disciplined like calendars and hours, and I block off 24 minutes to do this, and it's just not how I live my life.

[01:05:34] Adam: Or so they say, you never really know.

[01:05:36] Greg: Or so they say possibly they don't actually. And like, no disrespect, like that's great. I would love to be that kind of person, but it's so deeply unpleasant for me to try to force that upon myself that it's not worth it to me though I have also noticed that most of the people who have been on your podcast are like way more successful than me.

So like, ah, yin and yang here. There's some trade offs. It's also, obviously it's harder with the kids. I have sort of, I think like many parents, you know, time is precious enough that you feel the need to always be accomplishing something. And rather than overcoming that, I just backdoor it by telling myself, like, being with my kids is accomplishing something.

And I do believe that deeply. So that means like, okay, great. I'm still being productive if I'm just cuddling, you know, or just lying here doing nothing with them, or making some craft or something like that. So I'm pleased with where things are in terms of you know, dinner time and afterwards they have my full attention and presence or like, in so much as they want it, I suppose.

And then I'm not saying like, no to doing stuff with them on the weekends and then I just like, don't do any of the things that I like doing and that's okay because it's you know, a few months of this, maybe a year or two. I can go without piano for a little while. It's fine.

[01:07:02] Adam: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Well, may, but you know, you gotta be worried about the summer slide with piano. Be careful,

[01:07:08] Greg: Yeah. Yeah. I'm in the 2025 slide right now on that one.

[01:07:13] Adam: But you know, your kids see you working hard on something else and that's probably pretty important too. So,

[01:07:19] Greg: I think there’s some value there. You know, it's not enough for me to want to. If it didn't have to work, I don't know if I would do it just to set an example, because I don't know how much they really care, but it is a nice side effect at least. And they can, it's, you know, it's lovely working from home where they can see it and they come in here and you know, June will help out occasionally or we have dressed up a giant stuffed bear into a suit.

And Sadie often comes in and berates him for not finding enough summer camps for kids. So everybody's sort of doing their part. It's real family business around here.

[01:07:53] Adam: You've got beta testers, you've got the, you've got the line, the office manager

[01:07:59] Greg: Middle management.

[01:08:00] Adam: Yeah. You Middle management. Oh man. 6-year-old middle manager. I love that. Okay, Greg, last question. How can people fall along or be helpful to you in your journey?

[01:08:14] Greg: You know, go to CampWing, send it to your friends camping.com, send it to your friends. If you know anybody who runs a summer camp, please send it to them and tell 'em you like it. 'cause that's the big push. Now weirdly, you know, most of the things I feel like I've done in life have not worked.

And one failure after another, particularly on things like marketing, camping appears to be working from a consumer side. Like people are using it and like it. So this is surprising and slightly confusing for me. And so now I'm pushing on the advertising side of the business, and that is also working, like I'm getting advertisers.

But it's a slog and it's, you know, sales and it's one by one. So if you know anybody in that position, please send them my way.

[01:08:55] Adam: I will do that. And also see here you are learning that, you know, you're maybe not so bad at marketing and sales, so,

[01:09:01] Greg: It's been a revelation. I'm not as bad as I thought. I'm not sure. I'm like great at it, but that's fine. I don't need to be great at it. I need to be like, good enough.

[01:09:10] Adam: Yeah. Good enough. All right, well I will send everyone I can to CampWing and you may learn about other cities that you should be coming to soon based on that traffic. So, Greg, are you ready for lightning round?

[01:09:22] Greg: Born ready.

[01:09:23] Adam: Okay. Love the enthusiasm. All right. Greg, what is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever purchased?

[01:09:31] Greg: That would be the miracle blanket for swaddling. You can swaddle with anything but the miracle blanket cheating makes it easy. You put 'em uptight. They're little burritos and they sleep better, it’s cute.

 [01:09:44] Adam: That that's the one that has like the Velcro on it or, Yeah,

pretty important. Yep. What is the most useless parenting product you've ever purchased?

[01:09:51] Greg: I don't even know if I have one. I've expunged them from my memory. Yeah.

[01:09:56] Adam: Okay. What is the weirdest thing that you've ever found in your kids' pockets or in the washing machine?

[01:10:02] Greg: There's only one thing and it's always rocks. It's always pet rocks. But like they have names and backstories. So it is important if we lose them.

[01:10:12] Adam: Okay, good. Well, I am glad that you're saving one rock at a time. So, true or false, there's only one correct way to load the dishwasher?

[01:10:21] Greg: So I think this is false. I think there are more effective and less effective ways to do it. You know, I've got my opinions, but you know, which of these is better? I put the dishes in the most, you know, perfect, efficient, effective manner. Or I put them in a way that does not annoy my wife.

Like it's a values question. There's not one right answer.

[01:10:47] Adam: It's a spectrum of washing success. I love that. Okay. What is your signature dad superpower?

[01:10:55] Greg: You know, I asked June about this yesterday. I was like, do, am I good at anything on the parent? And she's like, you notice things. You notice things and you point them out, which I really liked. I was like quite touched. And I'm often, we're just in the city like, you know, you see that wall, here's what that means, it's da, da da.

And it's 'cause I like the sound. Well, I don't literally like the sound of my voice, but I do like talking, I guess. And they're right there and it turns out like maybe they like it too.

It's great.

[01:11:23] Adam: That is really sweet, that's what your daughter picked out. Like a superpower in a kid's eyes is noticing things. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. What is the crazier block of time in your house? 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM or 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM?

[01:11:37] Greg: Yeah, definitely the latter. I would say the morning is like more or less predictable. We do the same stuff. Five to seven. Like it could just, maybe it's iPads, maybe we're hanging out, maybe it's whatever. But definitely there's a chance one kid is mainlining whipped cream and the other is pretending to be a laundry basket.

And that just doesn't happen at, you know, 6:00 AM yet.

[01:12:00] Adam: Y, yet they haven't warmed up to it yet. So, the ideal day with your kids involves this one activity?

[01:12:08] Greg: Working on some project or like solving a problem with them, maybe it's a craft or something. Very silly. The other day we had a squirrel trying to make a home in the side of our house, and it was like, how do we solve the squirrel problem? And like, it's a team effort and sometimes they have like some pretty good ideas.

And you know, we took a recent craft project, just mini Eagle Junior, which is a lizard forward giraffe magician that Sadie made and made him like a little scarecrow. And then June and I came up with this like knockoff pepper spray combination to pour in the area. And he was like, ah, this is fun. Really solving a problem together.

Really enjoyed it.

[01:12:50] Adam: Oh, love that. Love that. Which one of your kids is your favorite?

[01:12:55] Greg: I would say my driver, I think there's just nothing like the feeling of satisfaction of cracking a 270 down the middle of the fairway.

[01:13:03] Adam: Do you have a name for your driver?

[01:13:07] Greg: No, I should, that's a good idea. Sometimes they break though. I don't wanna get too attached.

[01:13:11] Adam: Don't, yeah, don't get too attached. They're more likely to break than a kid. If your kids had to describe you in one word, what would it be?

[01:13:18] Greg: I'm gonna go with fun. They love mom more and that hurts a little bit. It's okay. But I'm the fun one, so like I'll take it. You know, that's not bad. I shouldn't say they love her more. They. They act like they, no, they probably love her more. It's fine. It's okay. She's a good mom.

It's fine.

[01:13:35] Adam: What is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

[01:13:39] Greg: It's gotta be sleep stuff, you know, like even now to be six and nine and like obviously we don't have structured nap time anymore, but they're so tired, but they don't wanna sleep and every adult within a mile would love a nap. And it's just, why won't you sleep? Definitely that.

[01:13:56] Adam: Well, the good news is that uh, it's daylight savings time, so you've recently, you know, you don't have that to contend with or anything, right? Like all sleep is fine the day after you…

[01:14:04] Greg: It's tough up here in Seattle also. It's sunny until 4:00 PM or 9:00 PM depending on the season. It's very confusing for everybody.

[01:14:12] Adam: What is the funniest thing that your kid has ever said to you in public or just generally said out loud?

[01:14:18] Greg: You know, sometimes they're genuinely funny and in like a good pun kind of way. Like I appreciate their humor. But the one that really got me was we went to Disneyland and it was day three on the Disneyland death march going from one ride to another. And Sadie just an hour in it was like, can it, we gotta stop.

We're just going from one to the other. And then we go to another ride and then we walk to another one. I said, ah, we freaking out. It's like, yeah, girl. Uh,huh. So we went back to the hotel and just like laid there for a while and…

[01:14:53] Adam: Do you remember, you wanna know what the highlight of my Disneyland trip was as a young child?

[01:14:57] Greg: Yeah. What was that?

Adam: It was the hotel pool. That was the highlight.

Greg: Yeah, yeah, exactly. We went to Great Wolf Lodge, which it's like uh, yeah. Okay. Water Park Hotel. Great place to get like Giardia or like six other tropical diseases. And, you know, after that I was like, so which one did you like more? Like Disneyland or Great Wolf Lodge? And they're like, I mean, they're both really good.

It's like, yeah, okay, well one of 'em is like 40 times more expensive than the other one. So we know where we are we going next time.

[01:15:26] Adam: What is your go-to dad wardrobe?

[01:15:30] Greg: Definitely t-shirt and pajama shorts every day, all day. I put on this collar shirt for some meetings. You made the bar. But the vast majority, yeah. All day, every day.

[01:15:40] Adam: Yeah. Well, I appreciate that you, I appreciate that you dressed up for this episode.

[01:15:44] Greg: Did, yeah. You know, I take these things seriously. Specifically a music venue shirt. This was my covid little bit of support by a bunch of music venue shirts.

So now they make up my pajama wardrobe.

[01:15:55] Adam: How many Radiohead t-shirts would you say you own?

[01:15:58] Greg: You know, I'm actually at zero, which is strange now that I think about it. It always feels like. I'm getting in on this stock too late. Like, I should have bought a shirt when I first loved them. Now I'm just buying a 2025 shirt, which I don't know, it doesn't, I don't know. It's not as interesting.

[01:16:14] Adam: Yeah, but Tom Yorkshire appreciates it. I bet. So,

[01:16:17] Greg: Yeah, I think he's ok.

[01:16:18] Adam: Yeah. He is probably gonna be fine. How many dad jokes do you tell on average in a given day?

[01:16:24] Greg: Point three. Point three. I'll say, you know, it's every, it's every, it's every few days somewhere in there. I do like a good pun and they like them. But I actually, I think the other day I had the first one where like, they kind of groaned. I was like, oh man, like you're six and nine. Like, I feel like I had a few more years of this.

What's happening?

[01:16:44] Adam: That’s how you know you've really landed. The dad joke is if there's a collective groan from your 6-year-old. So yeah. What is the strangest food that one or both of your kids has ever made you try?

[01:16:56] Greg: Oreo with toothpaste filling, which was a prank that they weren't that effective in pulling off, and I don't like letting 'em win. But I did sort of let 'em win and took a bite of it and like, it's not bad. I don't know. It's, I guess they make mint Oreos, so it was reasonable.

[01:17:12] Adam: Okay. What is the most absurd thing that one of your kids has ever asked you to buy for them?

[01:17:17] Greg: You know, I was I asked June if I could tell this story and I was told no. So I'm gonna pass.

[01:17:24] Adam: Okay. All right. appreciate her maturity there. What is the most difficult kids TV show that you've ever had to sit through?

[01:17:33] Greg: You know, I wanna say Paw Patrol, but that's only because I remember it. It's actually, it's some like, just real low quality unicorn. Horrible. Oh, it's so bad. And there's some good ones, you know, there's Bluey and then we're watching the unicorns. It's hurtful.

[01:17:50] Adam: What is your favorite kid's movie?

[01:17:52] Greg: I would say like sort of anything at a studio, Ghibli or however you say that, like My Neighbor Totoro. I love it. Like I enjoy it. It's very so calm and they like it too. That's a go to. Anything from that

[01:18:04] Adam: Okay. When you are hiding from your kids in the pantry, what is your go-to snack?

[01:18:09] Greg: It's absolutely Nutella. Copious amounts of Nutella. Yep.

[01:18:13] Adam: Excellent. How long can a piece of food sit on the floor in your house and you will still eat it?

[01:18:18] Greg: It's variable. I mean like, you know, 30 seconds, a minute's fine. It's mostly did I see it fall? I'm a big believer that once it's fallen, it's not doing any more damage. You don't have to be in a rush to pick it up. So then it's like, as long as I have my eyes on it the whole time, we're fine.

[01:18:33] Adam: Got it. Got it. What nostalgic movie can you just not wait to force your daughters to watch with you?

[01:18:40] Greg: Definitely Monty Python searches for the Holy Grail. Amy and I re-watched it a year ago and it's still amazing, and I was like, oh, this is, like, half of my sense of humor came from this movie, so let's get them on it. It's silly enough. I think they might like it

[01:18:54] Adam: I was gonna say, is it quite appropriate for six and nine? I don't know where are, I haven't watched it in a while?

[01:18:59] Greg: Not a hundred percent sure, I'd have to re-watch it, but we recently watched a, like two thousands rom-com 27 Dresses, which I don't know why that was a mistake and probably not age appropriate, but fortunately, like, it turns out there's a lot of context needed to really understand a romantic comedy, and most of that context was missing particularly from Sadie who in the closing scene of the wedding, as the bride walks with the flowers towards the groom, asks, is she bringing the flowers to him? She's like, yeah, that actually is what it looks like, but okay. We might have missed some of the point of this movie.

[01:19:35] Adam: The sweet innocence of a 6-year-old. What is your favorite dad hack for road trips or long flights?

[01:19:42] Greg: A bag of like toys and activities that are only pulled out for that time and thus our special, perhaps the little black things that you can scratch off and have a colored thing underneath. Those are deeply satisfying. We're a completionist family. We'll get that whole thing uncovered.

[01:19:57] Adam: Okay. Finally, what is your take on minivans?

[01:20:04] Greg: Uh, please God. No.

[01:20:06] Adam: Do you have a full alignment on this in the household or is this?

[01:20:11] Greg: No. It's actually come up as an idea, but we've got two kids. We definitely don't need a minivan and I know they're better now and I don't judge anybody who's got a minivan. Ah, That's just a lot.

[01:20:20] Adam: It's not gonna work. It's a bridge too far for you.

[01:20:22] Greg: It's a bridge too far for me.

[01:20:24] Adam: All right. Well Greg, thank you so much for joining me on Startup Dad. I truly appreciate it and I wish you, your family and CampWing all the best as we go into this summer season.

[01:20:38] Greg: Thank you so much for having me. This has been lovely. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

[01:20:42] Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Greg Laughlin. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review on Apple or Spotify.

It'll help other people find this podcast. Startup Dad is a Fishman AF production with editing support from Tommy Harron. I. If you're a startup founder, leader, or just want to get better at your job in tech as a growth practitioner, product manager, or executive, you can join a community of over 11,000 subscribers and stay up to date on my thoughts on growth and product by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www fishman af newsletter.com.

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