How Upbringing Shapes Our Views On Parenting, Technology, and AI | Chris Miller (father of 1, Hubspot)

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Chris: It isn’t to say that there aren't real risks or there isn't a real necessity for parents to be deeply involved in like monitoring how their kids are using technology, but I think barring them because of maybe a misplaced fear is not necessarily doing your kid a favor.

Adam: 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. In today's conversation, I sat down with Chris Miller. Chris is a VP of product at HubSpot, focused on growth and AI, where he has worked for over seven and a half years.

Prior to that, Chris held several product roles at companies like Runkeeper and Roam. He's a husband. And the father of one kid. In our conversation today, we talked about how Chris's upbringing and the careers of his parents shaped his own professional journey. We covered his relationship with his wife, the role of being a dad and supporting your wife after the baby is born and how their very different cultural backgrounds have shaped their parenting and their views on money.

We ended with a fascinating discussion about the relationship between kids and technology and what we want that to look like as parents who also work in technology. I hope you enjoy today's Startup Dad episode as much as I did making it.

Adam: I would like to welcome Mr. Chris Miller to the Startup Dad program. Chris, welcome. It is a pleasure to have you here with me today.

Chris: Adam, thanks for having me. We've been talking about this for a while really excited to be on the show. Fun to talk dad stuff and you know, there'll be a lot of product stuff that gets sprinkled in there, but we’ll put the dad stuff in the forefront.

Adam: I'm certain of it. You are a tough man to track down. So I really appreciate you taking the time for me with this recording today,

Chris: My pleasure. It's an honor.

Adam: All right. So Chris, let's dive in and tell me a little bit about your professional background. you've been at HubSpot for a very long time, but tell me about what you do.

Chris: I've been at HubSpot since 2016 and I've been on the product team the entire time. And my job these days is sort of twofold. I lead the growth product line at HubSpot, essentially like our, our PLG strategy. I've been sort of working on that, building that out, you know, since the day I joined and then most recently this summer or this past summer, I took over as head of product management for our AI product group.

And so we're sitting there. Not really sitting a lot, a lot of running around uh, you know, a lot of scrambling, but, yeah, my role leading the AI product group at HubSpot is just figuring out how we bring the value of AI to the HubSpot platform. And you know, unpacking what that means for our customers. We're still in, you know, the really early innings of the AI boom. And so there's still. A lot more questions than answers in some ways.

And so that's been a really fun sort of addition to the workload and responsibilities at HubSpot.

Adam: Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Just throw a little AI on top of the existing job description.

Chris: Sprinkle a little AI.

Adam: No big, no big deal, at a mega company like HubSpot. So, well, they're lucky to have you and I'm sure it's a monster, you know, team that you've got working with you too. So really excited. I'm, kind of a noob when it comes to AI, I use chatGPT from time to time. It helps me with various things, but certainly have not built it into a product strategy yet. So, I'm envious of those who have that opportunity. It's pretty exciting stuff.

Chris: You're not alone. I think a lot of people are still trying to figure out what are going to be like the the D.A.U. use cases for AI, both for themselves, but also for the products, you know, for all the product people listening. I think everyone's sort of trying to answer the same question, which is like, how does this actually manifest at the end of the day in the products that we're sort of building and shipping to customers?

And so it's kind of fun to know that everybody is more or less on a bit of a parallel journey as far as AI and product are concerned yeah, it's interesting stuff.

Adam: Cool. Well, we will come back to the role of technology in your personal life and talk about that with you and your kid and, how you think about that. But we're going to go all the way back in time. I'm curious to hear a little bit about your life growing up. So where'd you grow up? What was life like?

Tell me about your parents, if you have any siblings? Let's open the book on Chris.

Chris: Yeah, so sort of grew up in right outside of New York City in Long Island, New York, a town called Baldwin grew up with both my parents and got one sibling younger sister, six years younger than me.

And you know, we, we grew up in a lower middle class background, you know, we didn't have an abundance of resources, so, you know, we did what we could to keep the ship together and try to have the best possible life we could. It was fun. I really enjoyed where I grew up and it was a really diverse town.

On a bunch of different dimensions, you know, socioeconomically, religiously, racially. And so I had sort of a, a real wide array of different friend groups and other people in different backgrounds and, you know, right on the back door of New York. And so we spent a lot of time in the city, almost every weekend it felt like, it was a great upbringing. It was like having the access and convenience of the city, but we lived in a town outside. That was its own little community. It was good.

Adam: Awesome. What did your parents do for, work? Did both your parents work

Chris: Yeah, both my parents worked. My mom worked for a telecom company doing, you know, support on the phone. And I don't even think they had chat support back then, that might've been sort of the last frontier before she retired.

And my dad worked for the City of New York for many, many years. And so modest jobs, but you know, they were great.

Adam: Okay, so let's, transition and I'm curious. Tell me about your family now. You have a partner, wife, and you have a kid who is almost two years old. And I'm curious, how'd you meet your partner? And tell me a little bit about your son.

Chris: Yeah. I moved to Boston to go to college. This was, you know, mid 2000s. And right before my senior year, I met Julia, who's now my wife. And so we've been together since 2008 and got married in 2016 and had our first kid, Wes. In 2022. Oh, that was really stressful making sure I got all those years right. And so, yeah, Wes is almost two years old now. And yeah, it's been a fun journey together. We've probably spent a fair amount of our adult lives as partners, as a unit. And so it's been a really great adventure. And this new chapter has been. It's been, it's been a ride, but it's been wonderful as well.

Adam: Yeah, and almost two years old, you're like in the thick of it. Like many, like many times when I do these interviews, you are in the middle of nap time right now. So hopefully Wes stays asleep.

Chris: Yeah, he's in the next room sleeping. Yeah. Yeah. He's a good sleeper. Usually, you know, he likes his naps.

Adam: Me too. I love love a good nap. So, okay. So tell me a little bit about, your wife. Does she work outside the home? What does she do?

Chris: It's funny. we had the same major Boston College. We're both sociology majors. I don't think we had a single class together, but we took very opposite paths. Like I knew that I wanted to work in tech really midway through my senior year. I'd sort of made a commitment to myself though.

Like, yeah, tech is where I want to be. And I didn't know what product management was, but my background in sociology, I was always fascinated with people and human behavior and starting to think about how humans used products, how they decided which products to use, when to dump products was what sort of pulled me into tech.

I was really fascinated about that and Julia, on the other hand. She went down the nonprofit road, and that was really aligned with sort of her values and the impact she wanted to have on the world. And so, she's been a fundraiser in the nonprofit space for the past, like, 13 years, and I've been on the software side of things, sort of building and shipping product.

But, you know, we have a lot of the same shared values. And like, you know, when you kind of strip away the actual day to day tactical work. I think a lot of the sort of same things that get us excited about our jobs are kind of in the middle of that Venn diagram. And so it's been, it's been really fun, like engaging with people.

She does a ton of that as a fundraiser, just sort of problem solving messaging trying to unpack how humans think and make decisions and sort of all those things are sort of shared interests. And so, you know, our jobs and careers look like totally different on paper. But, you know, we're both just sociology undergraduates at some point at the end of the day.

Adam: Use a lot of the same skills, but apply them in different ways, which is really really interesting.

Chris: Yeah, exactly.

Adam: Yeah. You know, it's funny that sort of  idea of what makes people tick and how they think and respond to things and consume product. Like that's also a very similar thing that drew me into doing product and growth work as well.

So I'm just fascinated by consumer psychology and you know, I won't want to say I was a sociology major in college, but I, you know, I took a class or two, so, I'm qualified to write about it on the internet.

Chris: I mean, I would say, I think like to be a great product manager, you almost have to be more interested in the humans than the technology itself. And I know that might sound like a controversial or even like, you know, artificially spicy thing to say, but I do think that, you know, at the end of the day, if you're building a product for humans, you've got to be obsessed with the humans and the technology almost, you know,  early on in my career, I had to really train myself to be almost ambivalent to the solution, right?

Just focus on like the people and the problem that they're, facing and, you know, what the success look like And so, yeah, I think that that fascination with humans and how they human is kind of the core product management at the end of the day.

Adam: Very cool. Yeah. We'll get into that. We'll talk a little bit about rationalizing with a two year old human soon, but it sounds like you and your wife were together for a long time. And then you said your Wes was born in 2022. What was the decision like for the two of you to start a family?

Was that a long conversation or something you kind of always knew was going to happen?

Chris: I wouldn't say we always knew it was going to happen, but we knew we wanted to be parents. That was sort of never something I think we questioned. I, I don't know. I'm a pretty goofy dude. Like I got, I've been, I've been working on dad jokes since I was like 14, 15 years old.

So I was like really training for, for for this moment. And Julia…

Adam: Doing your reps.

Chris: Doing my reps. Yeah. You know, working out training and Julia comes from big family. She's got three siblings. And so, you know, And that's been a big part of her identity as well. And so we sort of both knew that we wanted to be parents, but I think we were surprised at like how difficult it was.

Like we actually didn't have an easy time having Wes, which is so funny. Cause like, dude, like sex education in the States is so backwards. Like I spent my entire, I spent my entire childhood being worried about having a kid before I was ready and then you're ready and you're like, Oh, it's just like magically happened at the snap of a finger.

And so we had to, like, really work. And we're really grateful and lucky that you know, we were able to have have Wes, but it was sort of a very humbling experience, you know, going through that. It took us a couple years.

Adam: Yeah. That's a pretty common thread amongst the Startup Dad community. I think it's so much more common than we think, but you've got a great two year old now, so that’s exciting.

Chris: I have a great two year old now. And just going back to that, like, I think I was very shocked at how common it was once we started openly talking about it to the point where I was like, I wonder why no one talks about it until you go through it. Like, I really wish I would have had just a little bit of foresight and preparation to just set that expectation.

And I think now that we've gone through it. Like, one of the things we try to do is be open about it just so people can feel, you know, just a sense of I don't know if camaraderie is the word, but just like deep empathy from people have gone through it regardless of how it turns out on the other side.

I think just like having that sense that, like, you're not alone, like other people have sort of managed through this and, you know, you'll make it out the other side is like, really yeah. It's something I wish I would have had as an expecting dad or or hopefully expecting dad when we were sort of still in the early innings.

Adam: Yeah. It's one of the reasons I do this show right is people get to hear about these types of stories and realize that it's not as uncommon as, as you might think when you're going through it. So, one of the things you mentioned to me is that you and your wife come from very different backgrounds.

I already know you've only got one sibling, she's got three, but tell me more about what it means to you that the two of you come from different backgrounds and how's that influenced parenting for the two of you? 

Chris: Oh, my gosh. So, you know, like I said, I grew up lower middle class right outside of New York City and I grew up like basically, New York in the 90s, like, culturally, like, that's, that's like who I am and who I was, the music, the culture the community that I lived in shaped our sensibilities around certain things.

And Julia grew up in like a quite nice suburb right outside of Minneapolis. She's from the Midwest. I come from an African American family. She comes from an like a, I guess like a Scandinavian American. That's everybody in Minnesota, I think is somehow Swedish, you know, Norwegian, and she's no exception.

She comes from a big family, multiple siblings, just me and my sister. And so, you know, when you kind of lay that out on the table, you could probably expect that there's going to be some different, like assumptions we're going into this new, new journey with. I mean, just like one example is just like screen time. Like, I remember watching TV at a really young age and I was like, oh, it's because I was by myself, I didn’t have a sibling. And my parents had, they had other things going on, you know, like they're working. And like, I spent a lot of time outside when I couldn't be outside I was watching TV. You know, she was like, we're not going to, we're not going to put him in front of TV until, you know, whatever age I was like, is that really like the studies and stuff, but also at the end of the day, I think when you are number three out of four, you already have built in entertainment and older siblings that probably kind of shapes how you think about the necessity of certain things.

And yeah, I mean, that's just like one of probably a lot of different,

Adam: Yeah.

Chris: A lot of different ways that our backgrounds have kind of shaped. How we think about, you know, like normal parenting or like a normal childhood and upbringing looks like, but, you know, they're often like really funny conversations when we kind of run into those things in real time.

I'm like, wait a second. That's not normal. And she's like, yeah, of course it is. I'm sure there's a lot of shit that I do. That's super weird that she would totally judge me for.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's wild to think like I was raised on the Simpsons, you know, like that was like my, I watched a lot of that show. Now I'm terrified to think about my kids watching that show. I'm like why, but it was okay for me, you know?

Chris: Some of my earliest memories of watching TV were like WWE. Like, I was watching professional wrestling. I mean, I was like raised by Vince McMahon, essentially, my uncle for a lot of years. Like, I, you know…

Adam: Not the best role model.

Chris: Not the best role model. Not the best role model. Wrestling is still something that like, still think of like culturally being part of my identity. Like, I love wrestling nostalgia, and I'm like, cannot wait to show Wes like throwback videos of my favorite matches growing up, but like, I don't think I can let him watch today's product until he's like much, much older.

But I mean, I think I learned how to get suplexed before I learned how to walk. I was taking bumps. So yeah, it definitely shapes your upbringing. Julie probably couldn't name a single professional wrestler. Other than maybe Hulk Hogan, maybe The Rock, but you know, that's because he's a movie star now.

So yeah, there's just like a lot of different… just like even roughhousing, right? Like, I think growing up in the 90s in New York, we did a lot of like, I don't know if you, do you know what slap boxing is?

Adam: Oh, yeah.

Chris: Like I grew up slapboxing. I think she would be mortified if I tried to slapbox with Wes, you know. She'd be like, what are you teaching him?

Adam: You’d be teaching you'd be teaching your kid how to hit.

Chris: Yeah, right, I mean, like, clearly that's, clearly that's a hard no, I think. You can objectively look at that and say, like, yeah, like, that's probably not the thing we want to prioritize, teaching him, but, like.

Adam: Right

Chris: I was outside, man. Like I had to learn how to slapbox. It was, it was an important skill at a young age because I had older cousins.

I spent a lot of time growing, growing up around too and that's just, it was our pastime, man. It was normal.

Adam: Well, let's talk a little bit about Wes and about you as a dad. So I'm curious to know about the earliest memory you have of fatherhood.

Chris: Oh man. The earliest memory I had about fatherhood was realizing that the most valuable things that I could do probably had nothing to do with Wes and had everything to do with Julia.

Adam: Oh, yeah, say more about that.

Chris: You know, you have that. Okay. So what do I do next? Moment after we come home from the hospital, I'm like, well, he kind of eats and he sleeps.

Adam: Right, you're pretty useless.

Chris: pretty useless, but what I can do is make Julia a smoothie. What I can do is move the, you know, we have one of those little carts that she kept all her, like, breastfeeding and pumping equipment. And, you know, sometimes it needed to be downstairs. Sometimes it needed to be upstairs. And, yeah, it's this guy's job to move the cart up and down and, you know, the diaper changes and stuff like that too, too, for sure. But like a lot of the labor was actually supporting my wife and I didn't have a ton of hands on things that I needed to do early on.

And, you know, that was both like relieving because I was terrified, but also sort of like, wait, I thought there was more to this. Like, I actually don't really feel like I was like truly dadding in the way that I imagined being a dad was going to look and feel like until he turned one, you know? And so I think my earliest memory was just sort of like, oh, I had a completely misset, you know, set of expectations around sort of my job in the early days.

And it was like almost disappointing.

Adam: Yeah.

Chris: I'm like, can I at least like pose with the baby? So it looks like I'm doing dad, dad stuff at this phase cause he doesn't, he doesn't even know I'm in the room.

Adam: Right. You had all these dad jokes queued up and no one to listen to them. Julia definitely didn’t want to hear them.

Chris: No one to listen cause she didn't want to listen to them either. Right. Exactly.

Adam: Right. She's had, she's had years of listening to them and she's like, no, I'm good. So as you've gone through the last couple of years with a now two year old, what are some of the more surprising things that you've discovered as a dad?

Chris: You know, I used to have a really live and let live sort of approach to life and minding my business. I don't mind my business anymore, man. I walked out and I, you know, the dad vision, you see things you can't unsee just little things like it annoys me when someone doesn't move their trash cans back to the curb after, you know, and there's a, there's a buffer period of about six hours.

I'm like, all right, it's all good. But if I'm trying to get that stroller down the sidewalk and I see a gang of trash cans, it's gonna ruin my day. Like, there's just certain things now that trigger me. And I'm like, who have I become? Like, I'm now the guy who gets upset about the trash cans not being moved back on time.

And you start to just notice, like, sharp corners. I mean, and, you know, the toddler years. It's just like a bull in a china shop. And so you're constantly just trying to, you know, do like OPSEC for your house to make sure that there's nothing that's going to accidentally like kill your kid. And so, yeah, I feel like I used to really just live and let live and risk taking excited me, and I'm just like so much more risk averse, and I think that that'll probably subside as he gets older and I get less scared, but how quickly that switch got flipped, just like,

Adam: Yeah. That's amazing.

Chris: Completely unexpected, yeah, completely.

Adam: Yeah. It's amazing what you mentioned too about sharp corners. Like I recall, especially when our kids were young and going over to somebody else's house who maybe didn't have kids and like your first instinct as you navigate the house for the first 20 to 30 minutes is what can I pick up and set up high?

Get out of this kid's like range of, you know, destruction.

Chris: You gotta go in like the Secret Service and sweep the house. I hold them at the door, I go room by room, and then once it's clear, the family can enter, yeah, we can enter the, the, the facility.

Adam: One of the things that parents get a lot of is advice, right? Solicited advice, unsolicited advice, so much unsolicited advice. If you could hit a time machine and rewind time for two years before Wes was born, right? You know right before he's born.

What's a piece of advice that you'd share with your younger self about fatherhood?

Chris: Don't get caught in the early milestone rat race.

Adam: Mmm,

Chris: I really wish I would have been able to not get wound around the axle around stuff like that. I actually remember distinctly one time, I think it was like one of my parents neighbors, it was someone I didn't really know that well, and they had met Wes for the first time, and you know, he was young, he was still like, geez, like six or seven months old and she was like, is he walking yet?

I'm like, no, is he?

Adam: He could barely hold his head up.

Chris: Yeah. I'm like, he's kind of, he's not even really crawling. He's kind of just like pulling himself army crawl style across the room, but you know, he's healthy. He's fine. She's like, wait, well, my daughter was like walking by seven months and I was

Adam: Mmm.

Chris: Like, Well, how old is she now? She's like 40.

I'm like, wait a second. And on one hand, I'm like, well, maybe, you know, that 40 years ago, the details could be fuzzy, but then you start to think, is something wrong with my kid? Like, should he be walking? And then you start to talk to your friends and ask them, hey, when did your kids start walking? And then you get down this, like, you know, you go down this tailspin of like, worrying about all these little milestones at the end of the day.

It's like, dude, when you're in your twenties, 30, like gives a shit when you started walking, you know, I'm just like, none of that stuff actually matters, but you can get really obsessed with all these micro milestones that, you know, are good to, I guess, keep an eye on, but, you know, if our pediatrician wasn't telling us to be worried about something, I probably should have just listened.

And there's probably some things that, you know, yeah. Social pressure or just like weird conversations send you into a tizzy. And I think myself today, I wish if I could go back and talk to Chris Miller two years ago, I'd be like, dude, just don't get caught up in the micro milestone rat race. Doesn't matter.

Adam: Yeah, it's hard though because you know everyone posts all the milestones of their kids online and you're just constantly consuming other people's info, right? And it's really hard to not want to compare yourself to other people in that situation.

Chris: Oh, yeah. And social media is the worst, right? Like, I see these kids. Like, I play a lot of golf. Golf's probably my passion. It's, it's so lame. It's like, you know, late thirties guy in tech is into golf. Like what else is new?

Adam: Shocker. I'm, I am, I am amazed,

Chris: Yeah, if it's not golf, it'd be like cycling or something like that.

Some, some other like gearhead activity. And I see these kids who were like just crushing the ball at like two years old and you're just like, well, should my kid be able to do that? And you don't see behind the scenes that these kids are probably like, you know, from the moment they wake up, they're not allowed to do anything else but play golf.

But I'm looking at my kid who can barely hold a fork and I'm like, is something wrong here? Right? And so, you know, once the algorithm dials in that you're like the dad of a toddler, it's over. You just got to log out until they pass by.

Adam: Just burn your computer.

Chris: Burn your computer, throw your phone in the trash.

Adam: So, okay, now let's go to the opposite end of this, which is iff you could rewind time and you're getting bombarded with advice at, you know, T minus one month until Wes is born, what's a piece of advice that you got that you would kind of tell your younger self to just flat out ignore? Or maybe just something that you found to not be true at all and you, you know, you had this belief going into parenthood.

Chris: Oh, yeah. I think I had a lot of friends and I, and I truly believe that this was their experience with fatherhood that like, from the moment that they saw their kid for the first time, they were just in love with being a dad. And I knew I loved my kid from the moment I saw him, but being a dad wasn't cool until again, a year in, it kind of sucked the first year.

You're kind of useless. You're not even getting any feedback, right? Like he can't even, he couldn't pick me out of a lineup. you know, just, I didn't have that bond with him yet. And he had that bond with his mom because, you know, she, he was a breastfed baby. She, she, she was his food source.

He's like literally connected to her for the vast majority of his, of his waking hours. And I just didn't have that with him. And I, I felt this sense of guilt, honestly, like, why don't I love this? Like, why don't I feel like this is really fulfilling? and I finally like mustered up the courage to kind of like toss this out to some of my, you know, the dads that are in my friend group and just heat check it for some validity. And a lot of people were like, yeah, dude, this kind of sucks the first year it gets, it gets much better. And honestly, like, you know, he's coming up on, two years old and it's been like every single day it's so much fun.

My, face lights up, our faces light up when we, when we see each other in the morning these days and just, you know, I used to be like in front of him in his high chair dancing and he's just like, dude, get out of the way. I want to look at mom right now. And so it was me just like starved for attention from my own kid.

Which probably says a lot about me more than it says about him, but I think it was really normal now to kind of feel that way. And, I can kind of shed whatever guilt that might have been there. And know that, yeah, like it, clicks for dads at different times.

And for me, it was like, I think the moment it clicked was when I called his name and he looked, found me in the room and smiled. And that was maybe like month seven or eight, and I was like, finally, I'm not a stranger anymore. And that was, I think like the beginning of all right, like now me and Little Doodle, you know, figure out what our relationship looks like.

Adam: Yep. It's interesting because you mentioned something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is this idea of feedback and you said, you know, I didn't even get any feedback from him.

Professionally, we're used to getting feedback all the time, right? Especially if you're in product, you get your customer feedback, stakeholder feedback, like it's a bombardment of feedback and then in your personal life.

You just don't get it from your kid for a while. Right. So that dichotomy has got to be really challenging.

Chris: It's maddening. And again, if you're a product person, it's like feedback and clear communication are sort of like. You know, the fuel of your profession and you got, like, this person, this little mini person who like can't give you feedback and cannot communicate and can't understand what you're saying either.

Right.

Adam: Right. Just kind of looks at you blankly.

Chris: I'm like, this product is broken. It's like, no, it's not. You just had to, this is, this is normal. You got to figure it out. And so yeah, really, really hard and challenging and takes a lot of intention. At least it took a lot of intention for me to sort of try to take all the ways in which my brain is, like, wired to think like a product person and kind of just, like, put that aside and look at this through, like, a completely different lens but yeah, it's super, super frustrating in the beginning, where you're just, like, you know, and especially because in the beginning, it's actually much easier because when your kid cries you can kind of brute force the problem by just, it's like, it's either hungry, sleepy, stinky diaper, one of those three, we will crack the code on this and get through it. But once you know, it gets out of that phase of just like predictability. And it's like. No, it's like he wants a specific snack or, but he doesn't know how to communicate that or when it's like a specific toy and like literally could not, or just doesn't even know what he wants or just wants to be held or like paid attention to.

Yeah. And that's, when, yeah, you, you can't look at your analytics and get a sense of what's going on.

Adam: The dashboard's broken on this thing.

Chris: The dashboard's broken. Yeah. That's gonna, you're gonna have to navigate that one through feel.

Adam: As a product person and product managers in general, operate on a lot of frameworks, right? Frameworks, guardrails, processes, things like that. Have you developed any frameworks or guardrails for parenting? Things that you kind of rely on or fall back on consistently?

Chris: I've definitely not developed anything worth sharing on by any framework that I've tried to create myself. My only piece of advice is like, don't use it because it's probably trash. This isn't really a framework for parenting, but I think it's a framework for existing as an adult once you transition into being a parent, which is thinking about time as being your your most valuable finite resource.

Time is like now, the thing I obsess about I care more about my time and how that gets spent more than anything else. Because time that I'm spending working is time I'm spending not being a dad. Time I'm spending being a dad is not time I'm spending doing the things that fulfill myself. and the time I'm spending doing tedious things that may be low value might just be sort of like a losing ROI proposition. And so getting more comfortable outsourcing things that I might, we might not have outsourced before when we had an abundance of time is sort of a shift in mentality. And then, and honestly, going back to just how upbringing you know, kind of dictates how we think about parenting and money.

Like I think the time equation or, you know, , the sort of time is money conversion is, is often an area where like, Jules and I are like, not necessarily always looking at things through the same lens. I'll give you an example, right? Like, for me right now, I care the most about reducing stress and complexity and like waste, right? And so I will throw money at problems to kind of like, make those things go away. And part of that is shaped by like, yo, like I grew up not really having optionality. Like we, were forced to live a certain way because that was the way we had to live. And, you know, I think Jules was fortunate to sort of grew up in a family that had more resources, but their sensibilities were often, you know, pointed towards like let's be thrifty when we can. And sort of like, let's figure out how to make things work with what we have. And, like, one way in which it shows up is, like, traveling. Like, traveling stresses, I mean, traveling stresses everybody out, but traveling always stresses me out. And traveling with a kid stresses me out, like, more than anything on earth.

Like, I start planning, like, four days in advance, the sequencing of, like, how we're going to get up in the morning, like…

Adam: You gotta like, psych yourself into it, right?

Chris: oh, yeah, I feel like, you know, like, some type of secret operative in terms of just like, how we have to stay on the schedule and the transitions and all that stuff. And so things like not flying economy, but flying comfort plus or whatever, just you get a little extra leg room. So you could stick the diaper bag underneath your feet. And like, those things matter to me, right? Jules, her mom actually worked for an airline for a really long time. She's retired now. And so she still can sometimes fly with, like, standby benefits.

And so you kind of show up and like, we've done this a bunch. We've done it for weddings. You kind of show up at the gate and you hope that there's empty seats. And my mother in law is great with kind of like keeping her eye on the console to make sure that there's going to be, you know, a couple spots on the plane and you save a bunch of money, but she's got to be flexible and adaptable.

And 1 time we were sort of traveling separately and she was with the baby and said, hey, I think I'm going to fly standby home to save a few bucks. And I was like, have you lost your mind? Like, why would you do that? She's like, what are you talking about? Like, we've done it all the time. Like, you know, my mom thinks it's a great idea.

And I'm like, the one thing I'm thinking right now is I am so happy that I'm not with you, because if I got dragged into this, I probably have a complete meltdown.

And so I'm sitting there, you know, on my phone looking at the play by play. She's telling me things are going well until things don't go well.

And then the flight gets delayed or she didn't get on. So she finally comes home and I'm like, hey, like, you know, how'd that, how'd that go? She's like, yeah, it was, it was. It was fine. I'll never do it again. You know, and, and so just certain things like that. I'm kind of just like, I, I don't, I don't romanticize the struggle, man.

Like, I gotta, if I can make the stress go away efficiently, like, and cost effectively, I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw money at the problem. Dude, another controversial, costly product in the sort of, you know, parenting world is the Snoo, right? I'm sure you've probably talked to a bunch of people about the Snoo.

Adam: The Snoo has come up on this show many, many times.

Chris: If anybody here has a startup dad, bingo and Snoo’s on the board, I'm going to, I'm going to help you out. On time here, but you know, she was very Snoo reluctant and I was very drawn into the Snoo because I, I'm also had nothing to do with being a dad. I'm just a gear head and like spending money on

Adam: Right. It's cool technology.

Chris: Fun gadgets. It's cool technology. And you know, we talked a bunch of people about the Snoo and it was like kind of a mixed bag of results. And so we said, you know what? We're not going to do it. And so we, you know, brought Wes home from the hospital. I think it was like. Okay. It had to been maybe week two where we were just, we were in the blender fighting for our lives to try to get just like, you know, 10 minutes of, sleep. And I think. I just, I, I got out of bed like The Undertaker and just grabbed my phone and it must have been like 4 a. m. and ordered a Snoo. And I think I even googled like, how do I get a Snoo right this second? I was like, I will leave my house to go physically get a Snoo. I don't care if they, if they charge me twice what retail is, but we have to find a solution to this.

Right? And I would love if the people from Snoo watch this, like share with us. The chart of purchases broken out by hour of the day. I am sure that most of the purchases spike between the hours of like 1 a. m. and 5 a. m. It's got to be when like the cash register starts dinging and, and it's not a cheap product, but you know, we had to give it a shot and it worked for us.

Like it worked wonders. And it's like, you know, certain things like that. I know some, parent friends who kind of linked arms and held the line that they just weren't going to do it. And I'm just like, why? Like the sleep is so, so good. Why would you deprive yourself of that? So yeah, that's, that's, I would say, you know, I almost forgot what the original question was, but

Adam: Oh, that's okay. I got mesmerized by the Snoo. You know, the Snoo did not exist I think when our kids were Snoo age. And so, you know, we had like the old, the gigantic swing that took up like half of your room.

And it's got like legs that like, it's like man spreading everywhere.

And it's just like swinging violently. That worked for us. but the Snoo, maybe someday I'll experience the Snoo.

Chris: Yeah, Snoo is fantastic. I'm very pro Snoo. Love the Snoo.

Adam: Yeah, it's a really good thing to your point there about like the histogram of, hour of the day that you buy the Snoo, it's a really good thing that like Uber has not taken over Snoo sales because there would be some surge pricing. All over that thing. 4 a. m. markup.

Chris: And people would pay. They’d pay.

Adam: Oh, yeah, of course. Of course.

Chris: In that moment of desperation, they will cough up whatever it takes to get that baby to stay down. 

Adam: Yep. you know, you mentioned. You like to play golf. And I'm sure you played golf before your son was born and sounds like you still managed to squeeze in some golf.

But what is something that you had to give up to become a father? What's something you actively do less of now that you're a dad?

Chris: I'm not gonna do the cliche, like, sleep.

Adam: Well, that's a given. that's like baked into the cake.

Chris: Yeah. Spontaneity. I think that was, I don't think I fully even understood. How spontaneity played a role in my life and just the freedom and flexibility to be able to decide things in real time that might have sort of like consequential impact. But you have the flexibility to be able to do them to just wake up 1 day and be like, Hey, let's drive to so and so and do X, Y, Z, or like, hey, let's go on this trip. We found like a flight deal and we want to just, we want to just go. And I think like with the pandemic, we had a lot more of that flexibility through remote work to be able to really indulge in spontaneity. And so we kind of got addicted to spontaneity.

And, you know, in whatever way you can during a global lockdown, sometimes that just meant like getting up and driving to go on a hike. And it's not to say that we're not able to do a lot of those same things, but the amount of planning that it takes to do that, I think that was the thing that took me by surprise, which is like, cool, if you want to go on a hike.

Now we got to work around nap times. We can kind of throw nap times out of out the window, but we're not incentivized to do that. And we got to pay that tax later when he when he doesn't want to go to sleep, or like, we want to go out to dinner with friends. Like, we still have rich friendships with, you know, the people that were friends before we became parents.

But it's like. Yeah there's no more just like, you know, shooting a text on a Friday afternoon and seeing who's around for an early dinner. It's like babysitters involved. And again, bedtime considerations. And so I think what it does create is intentionality around the things that you do because you do have to put in some up front sort of like labor in order to plan that you didn't have to do before. And so I think what that has resulted in is us doing things that the end have been more gratifying for us because we knew that if it wasn't going to be worth the cost of planning, we just, we're not going to do it. And so, like, that's, I think that's probably the upside of that equation, but I think the loss in spontaneity…that kind of feels like your youth going away.

And in some senses, that was like the growing up moment of like, yeah, I just can't. It's time to start planning things months in advance and oh boy. That's not always fun.

Adam: Question, because we're in the new year, did you make it to midnight on New Year's Eve or no?

Chris: I did, but you got to put an asterisk in the record books. I took a nap before that, you know.

Adam: Okay, good.

Chris: I took a little nap during the intermission and then you wake up to you know rocking New Year's Eve and that whole crew and you know, so I made it technically past midnight.

Adam: I'm assuming your son did not.

Chris: He did not, my wife did not. Yeah, I mean, that and that's and that's just ego, right?

Like, I think I know I'm washed up already. But when you when you go to bed at 9 p. m. on New Year's Eve, you are really washed up. And so I'm just fighting to keep any shred of youth that I possibly can.

Adam: Alright, couple more for ya. What's a, what's a mistake that you've made as a, as a dad? 

Chris: I don't know, man. It's a calamity of errors all the time. I think one of the funniest mistakes I made was it's funny how you take things like as a product person, like so literally sometimes, and it's almost like you take instructions as like spec. And I remember one of the things that the doctor told us was about like how important it is for us to keep the house warm and especially like the rooms that he sleeps in warm, because babies don't have the ability to regulate their own temperature.

And I was like, oh wow, I don't think I really knew that. I was like, that's why you got to swaddle them. And like, bath's got to be like super quick. Get them to that blanket and that towel and like. Get them warm again. So I remember being just like really stressed about the house being too cold and like him freezing to death and his bassinet.

It's like the house is set to like like 70 and I was just like, oh, it's got to be warmer. And I remember one time I was on duty so that Jules can get some sleep and I turned the heat up and we have like an older sort of steam, you know, HVAC in our house and I woke up, I fell asleep on the couch during my watch.

That's mistake number one is like, you can't fall asleep when you're on watch. And I fell asleep. And when I woke up, it was like 80 degrees in the house. I'm like, I'm going to cook the baby. I'm going to fricassee the baby. That, that's. That's that was like, so I ended up having to, like, rush upstairs and sneak in the room and, like, open a window.

It just felt like I just felt so I felt like a buffoon. And like, you know, no harm, no foul. But like, he's not two yet. And so there's plenty of time for me to, like, do some dumber dad stuff. But so far, I've kind of stayed out of you know, major blunders and you know, he's still alive and kicking. He's healthy

Adam: That's good. That's good. Yeah. I guess I would take away two things from that. One is don't cook the baby.

Chris: Don't cook the baby

Adam: But also, you know, 80 degrees, he's probably going to be fine. And then the other thing that I would take away is what you mentioned at the beginning, which is just like the obsession around, you know, the info that you get and like trying to adhere perfectly to the letter of the law. And you know, that obsession can drive you crazy too.

Chris: Yeah, like even when you get these sort of like baseline, you know diagnostics or milestones, they don't ever tell you what the sort of standard deviation or margin of error if for any of those things are. And so you're like, I mean, the, the variability and just humans in general mean that you're probably okay.

But when that doctor says, keep the house at like 71, I'm like, okay, that's an exact 71. 

Adam: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: And so, yeah, that's the thing is like, again, turning off your product brain when you're having these conversations with non product people and realizing that the context of how you're, talking about what's good and what's bad is just much different than in your job, I think has been a funny sort of exercise and relearning how to be an adult and a person.

Adam: Yeah, yep, yep. I find myself like producting my kids now that they're older. Where I’m like…

Chris: Oh, I bet. What does that look like for you?

Adam: Oh, I mean. You know, we don't have like KPIs and OKRs or anything in the household, but like, you know, just like usability of like kids stuff and yeah, just a lot. There's a lot of user error in my house, as you might imagine.

So, yeah. Alright, last one. And this is interesting one. and a little bit of an intersection of product and technology. So you've built an entire career working in tech. You are attached to the AI initiative at HubSpot now. How do you think about the relationship that you want your son to have with technology and the internet?

And as a bonus, what do you think the influence of AI is going to look like on your son as he grows up?

Chris: Yeah, it's a great question. I guess I’ll start by naming the thing that I’m going to do my best to avoid, which is letting my own nostalgia, potentially irrational fears of a changing society, create an environment which puts my kids at risk of being left behind from a technology standpoint, right?

And it isn’t to say that there aren't real risks or there isn't a real necessity for parents to be deeply involved in like monitoring how their kids are using technology, but I think barring them because of maybe a misplaced fear is not necessarily doing your kid a favor. I think, part of why I was able to break into tech with no formal education in tech is because I spent a ton of time using products. Like, I got to, like, really be curious and get hands on and, like, try to understand how things work.

And I was really obsessed with, like, smartphones when they first sort of hit the scene. And and that was really good for me professionally. That was good for me to develop my problem solving muscles in my brain. And that technology was extremely foreign to my parents and to sort of the adults in my life.

And I think they probably could have looked at that and said, Whoa, this is really bad. I don’t want this kid glued to his phone all day, but they took a step back and it kind of allowed me. And again, I was much older at that time. But. It's just to say that, like, you can't let the sensibilities of a previous time dictate what makes sense for a time we haven't experienced yet.

So that's one guardrail. And, you know, unlike let's call it like Web 3, which I wasn't sort of, I was deeply skeptical about like where, you know, blockchain and crypto, we're going to sort of do in terms of changing the average person's daily life because it felt like an interesting technology in search of an equally as interesting problem.

I don't put AI in that category at all. Like, I actually think that AI is going to shape the way we live on a daily basis, but probably in ways that we can't. Anticipate yet, right? Like, it's it's still very like skeuomorphic in nature where it's like, oh, you know, we understood and understand chatbots.

We've understood those for a long time, but for the most part, they've been powered by like rules based logic. And so obviously the thing we want to do is like. Just remake chatbots, but being powered by generative AI instead. And like, while that's potentially cool, it's still really predictable, right?

Like it's still very much based on paradigms that we already sort of know and understand that I think the most impactful use cases are probably yet to be uncovered. And so I want to create space for Wes to sort of become familiar with the technology and use it and not necessarily bar it. But I think obviously I'm going to have to play a role in terms of helping him navigate it with a discerning eye, specifically when it comes to misinformation. I think that's the thing that keeps me up at night, which is like. I think even reasonably intelligent people can very easily be duped by AI.

But if you spend a lot of time in AI, you kind of get good at spotting things that were made by AI, right?

Adam: Sure.

Chris: And so one thing that I would love to be able to pass to him, assuming that sort of skill is still even relevant, you know, is like being able to look at things and critically analyze them and understand their origins and understand how much credence is worth putting into them and think just like navigating what media is going to look like and what sort of information is going to look like and how we sort of have a shifting definition of authenticity kind of evolves is something that I think a lot about keeps me up at night in terms of, geez, like, you know, seven, eight years from now, what's the world that Wes is going to be living in and what can I do now to make sure that he's as equipped as the next person, if not more,

Adam: Yeah.

Chris: To be able to not, not, fall into any traps or, you know, get duped.

Adam: Yeah, and it's fascinating that they have to teach this a bit in school now, which is like a thing that they didn't have to do when we were younger and in school. I mean, we had you know, the Dewey decimal system and the card catalog of the library and like, okay, and then the internet and at the beginning, you know, mostly legitimate things on the internet.

And then the internet exploded. And now they have to teach kids with the internet how to discern information and how to understand what is true and what is not and learn sources and things like that. And that's great. But now then you throw AI on top of that, but. And a lot, oftentimes you don't even know the source or maybe the source was incorrect.

And so that's really, really interesting. So I think we'll see a continued evolution there and just teaching kids how to navigate that landscape is going to be really fascinating.

Chris: And like, I think it starts with teaching them what the right questions are to even be asking in the first place. And not necessarily feeding them answers, but giving them like, you know, talk about frameworks. I think the best critical thinking frameworks are all just about identifying what situation are you in, and based on that situation, what are the questions you should be asking? And so that's something that I think, you know, almost independent of AI, just in terms of navigating the world, but all the technological aspects of the world, like that's probably where I'll focus a lot of my energy.

Adam: Well, that sounds like a great thing to transition to our rapid fire round on. Last thing I wanted to ask you before we get in there is if people want to follow along with Chris's journey or be helpful to you in some way. Where can they do that? Where do you spend your time on the internet?

Chris: I still spend a lot of my time on LinkedIn. I've been terrible with clearing through my inbox. So bear with me. If I, if it's read, then I saw it and I probably will come back to it. And honestly, much less time on X these days, probably too much time on Instagram. But you could probably find me across all those different platforms.

Adam: We will tell people to play around with HubSpot's AI work and send any and all feedback your way.

Chris: Yeah, totally.

Adam: Awesome. All right. Are you ready for a rapid fire round? 

Chris:Yes. Let’s do it.

Adam: Here are the rules of rapid fire. There are very few. I ask you a question, you respond as quickly as possible with the first thing that comes to mind, and then we move on to the next question. That is it. Are you ready?

Chris: Yeah, let's do it.

Adam: What is the most indispensable parenting product you've ever purchased? I think I already know the answer to this, but lay it on me.

Chris: The Doona trike.

Adam: Oh, not the Snoo. Okay.

Chris: Not the Snoo. The doona trike. 

Adam: The doona trike. All right. We will put that in the show notes. What is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased?

Chris: Any toddler shoes that have shoelaces. They shouldn’t even make them.

Adam: That's a first. Do not even make the shoes with the shoelaces for toddlers. Okay. Most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

Chris: Solo dadding and not figuring out what's going on with my kid.

Adam: Yep.

Chris: The first time I had a, a multiple night stint with Wes with no air cover. Yeah.

Adam: Huh. That was tough. 

Chris:That was tough.

Adam: All right. What is your go to dad wardrobe?

Chris: Lots of pockets. Cargo pants.

Adam: Lots of pockets. Okay. How many parenting books do you have in your house?

Chris: No less than a dozen.

Adam: How many parenting books have you read cover to cover

Chris: Me, me personally?

Adam: you personally!

Chris: Ugh. Honestly, cover to cover, maybe one. I do a lot of skimming.

Adam: Ok. You’re in good company.

Chris: Julia's great. She does, she does a lot of like, you know what, I know you're not, read these three chapters. Just read these three pages. Just read these three paragraphs for anything. Just read. She makes it easy for me to just get the highlights.

Adam: That's very nice of her. Speaking of books though, what is your favorite book to read to Wes?

Chris: Cliché. Llama Llama Red Pajama.

Adam: Oh, great book. That's a great one. What is your least favorite book to read to Wes?

Chris: Oh gosh. I hope the person who got him this book isn't listening, but there's this book called Piggy. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

Adam: I have not. No.

Chris: Good. It's not a great book. And it's weird because he comes to, and sometimes he is really into it. And I'm just like, I would rather read the newspaper to you than, than Piggy. Piggy is awful.

Adam: I would rather read you the ingredients on this jar of toothpaste or container of toothpaste than, I don't know, they don't make jars of toothpaste. I don't know where that came from, but all right. Do you let Wes watch TV? I know we talked about this a bit. And what is he allowed to watch?

Chris: He can watch some TV. He's allowed to watch. Bluey,

Adam: Great show.

Chris:  Golf. The New York Knicks, that's pretty much it.

Adam: Sensing a pattern here! What is the most difficult kids TV show that you've had to sit through?

Chris: In terms of kids TV shows, we're like a, Bluey household, and 

Adam: And Bluey’s quite good!

Chris: Bluey's quite, I mean, Bluey's obviously made for adults, like, I, I could, I could, I could binge Bluey without Wes if it came down to it, but oh, the other thing he watches is you know, Drake, the rapper, right?

Adam: Oh, of course.

Chris: Yeah. So Drake for his son's birthday shot a music video for a song his son made, which I mean, it's toddler stream of conscious rapping, but he's got like a high production value music video. And Wes is obsessed with, we watched this video. It's called My Man by Adonis. And we watch this video at least four times a day, like, and it's pretty effective. It usually shuts the tears down almost immediately, but it's kind of just like a cool video with a bunch of like five year olds playing basketball. And he like loves, he loves that partially because one of the only things he's also allowed to watch on TV is basketball.

Adam: Yeah. I'm gonna have to check this out. I have not seen this. Have you ever pretended to be asleep to avoid a middle of the night wake up?

Chris: Yes.

Adam: We just finished the holidays. When is it time to both start and stop blasting Christmas music? Or is it ever the time?

Chris: I think you can let it fly after Thanksgiving.

Adam: Okay.

Chris: Honestly, I'm kind of done with it on the 26th.

Adam: Okay, good. Just cut it right off.

Chris: Cut it right off. On to the new.

Adam: All right. All right. Yep. Have you ever secretly thrown away a piece of your kids artwork?

Chris: No, but I'm way more of a hoarder when it comes to kid artwork. Julia,

Adam: Yeah.

Chris: Right in the trash, we’re not keeping that, yeah, It's gone. It might not even make it out of the book bag, it just, I'm sorry, just gets stuffed into the bottom, yeah.

Adam: Yep. Have you ever used Wes as an excuse to get out of a social event?

Chris: No, I don't think so.

Adam: Okay, not yet.

Chris: Not yet, no. I don't get invited to that many things these days anymore. I'm like, ooh, a chance to be social?

Adam: Is there a Disney or Pixar movie that you are secretly a fan of?

Chris: Nah, they're usually all pretty good. Like, I think, again, I think it's one of those products that's, they fine tune the taste to make sure that adults will like it as, as well. I tend to, I tend to like them a lot.

Adam: Okay. What is your worst experience assembling a piece of kid's furniture?

Chris: Honestly, you know, you have like chores that you secretly like because they're therapeutic. Like for me, it's laundry, yeah. I kind of am into doing dishes. I don't mind doing dishes, but bro, assembling furniture is my jam.

Adam: Okay.

Chris: It's because it's kind of puzzly, right? It's kind of like a, like a product exercise. And I'm thinking about the instruction manual. And so I, even if it's a poorly manufactured product with terrible instructions, I still kind of get a kick out of trying to put it all together. So I can't say that there's been one that I've been like this, like, get me out of here. Usually having a good time.

Adam: Okay, are you an instruction manual guy or are you a, we're just gonna YOLO wing this thing and see how it, how it shapes up?

Chris: Oh God, you got to read the instructions. That's crazy. Yeah, you got, oh my gosh, just thinking about the idea of like breaking open like a bookcase and just trying to just go at it. No, absolutely not. Like I'm laying out all the pieces organized with the instructions. Like I got my phone in case I got to call support like we're…

Adam: You got a whole setup. What is the weirdest place that you've ever found a diaper?

Chris: Under the seat of my car.

Adam: Oh God, not going to ask you how long it was there. What is the most absurd thing you've ever done to make Wes stop crying?

Chris: Oh, gosh. There's no limit to the to the absurdity of my behavior when it comes to trying to get him in a good mood. But he really digs impressions. And so just like doing random impressions, like, sometimes I just do, I'll do a random impression of Julia. I'd be like, hi, I'm mom. And he thinks he's like, he's big into like slapstick humor too.

So like purposely falling down punching myself in the head and knocking myself out only and making so that only he can revive me. Yeah, there's a lot of silly dad antics that go on on a…he doesn't even need to be crying. Sometimes I'm like, hey, let's just be silly. Let's just go at it.

Adam: Yep, love that. Okay, How many seconds can something be on the floor and you will still eat it?

Chris: Depends on the floor. Depends on who’s floor.

Adam: Depends on who's floor. Great answer. Do you have a guilty pleasure movie? This is the movie that you watch when no one else is around. Maybe your wife's out of town and you're just like I gotta watch this movie.

Chris: Guilty pleasure movie.

Adam: I also refer to these as terrible dad movies.

Chris: Honestly, I really love The original Batman movie with Adam, Adam West and Burgess Meredith with all the whams and the booms.

And I mean, the plot is absurd. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Adam: I love it.

Chris: And I'm like, yeah, you gotta, you gotta suspend a lot of disbelief to get through that one, and like, you know, Julia can probably feel like the neurons slowing down from firing when she watches more than like 30 seconds of it.

But I'll just, I'll mainline the original Batman on loop if I, if I have the opportunity to, yea.

Adam: Yep. Okay. Now, you and Julia both grew up in the suburbs-ish. You only have one kid, but what is your take on minivans?

Chris: I don't want to offend minivan owners or drivers, but like, look, there's a lot of my personal brand that I've had to sacrifice when becoming a dad. I'm just, I'm not doing it. I think, yeah, like if we have to, there's got to be another way. Like, there's got to be another way. I just don't think I don't, I don't think I can do the minivan

Adam: So for you, you gotta draw the line somewhere, and that line is drawn before the minivan.

Chris: Before the minivan. Yeah.

Adam: Okay. I'll allow it. You're in good company there. Um, Some people much more aggressively anti-minivan than that. That was a very nice political diplomatic answer.

Chris: Well, because, like, I totally understand the practicality of them, and the place I'm coming from is not a place of practicality, it's a place of

Adam: Right.

Chris: Superficiality, vain aesthetic, but yeah, like, I just can't see myself rolling around in the minivan.

Adam: Okay. Last rapid fire question for you. Do you have a favorite dad joke that you would like to share on this podcast?

Chris: No, my dad jokes are much more in the moment. Like, I try to find the cringey dad thing to say that, like, everybody knows isn't funny. And then just, like, throw it out there and see, see if it sticks.

Adam: It rarely sticks.

Chris: If it, if it doesn't stick, then it's a wild success, right? Like if, if, if everyone gets up and walks to the other room, then like, we, we, we made something special happen.

Adam: All right. That's good. Good criteria. Defining a dad joke there with Chris. All right. Well, Chris, that's it for rapid fire and that's it for the pod. Thank you very much for your time and joining me today. It was a pleasure having you on the show.

Chris: Adam, it was a pleasure to be on the show. I'm super grateful for you to invite me and have me on. And, you know, I really appreciate it.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Chris Miller. 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 Heron. You can join a community of over 9,000 subscribers and stay up to date on all my thoughts on growth, product and parenting by subscribing to the Fishman AF Newsletter www.fishmanafnewsletter.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.