Safety & Security On The Internet As Parents | Kevin Hanaford (Dad of 2, Discord, Cruise, Microsoft)

StartupDad KevinHanaford Final Transcript

Kevin: You can't stop or prevent your kids from running into bad things in life.

And the more you do that. The less prepared they will be when they're adults. Teach them about these things, like give them context so they can understand why something is potentially bad or dangerous.

So that by the time they are faced with those kinds of realities, they'll hopefully have some amount of preparation to deal with that.

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 Kevin Hanaford. Kevin is an engineering leader at popular chat application, Discord, where he oversees security, safety, and security.

Privacy and platform teams. His career has included companies like Microsoft, PayPal, Amazon, Salesforce, and autonomous vehicle company, Cruise. In addition to his role at some of the most significant technology companies of the last few decades, he's also a husband and the father of two kids. In our conversation today, we spoke about how the world of internet safety and trust has shaped his perspective on parenting, especially as the father of two young girls.

We talked about a few frameworks and principles that he and his wife hold dearly when it comes to their family, the relationship he wants his daughters to have with technology, and how he balances the demanding 24/7 job of security with a deep commitment to his family. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Kevin Hanaford.

Adam: I would like to welcome Kevin Hanaford to the Startup Dad program. Kevin, thanks for joining me today. It's a pleasure having you here.

Kevin: Yeah, thanks for having me, Adam. I'm excited.

Adam: Also, I would be remiss if I did not thank our mutual childless friend, Behzod Sirjani, for introducing the two of us. I understand you and Behzod know each other back from your musical background.

Is that right?

Kevin: That's true. It actually goes back even further than that. I met him in seventh grade and kind of randomly sat next to him in one class, and he was a cool kid. I was definitely not. But I knew how to spell his name without asking, and so he talked to me after that.

Adam: Fast friends for life because you could spell Behzod. Yeah, we'll see. Maybe I'll do a survey after this and see how many people can spell his name.

Kevin: Perfect. Do it. Do it.

Adam: Definitely the AI generated transcript is going to flub this all day long. Speaking of you not being the cool kid in seventh grade, how did that translate into your professional background?

Tell me a little bit about what you do for work.

Kevin: I'm still not a very cool kid to be honest. I actually grew up around technology. My dad had a lot of computers around all the time. I was born and raised in Juneau, Alaska, and my dad actually ran Juneau's first ISP through our house. And so I was kind of just constantly surrounded by computers.

I've always been interested in it. And then I moved to Redmond, Washington, so Microsoft country in fourth grade and you know, surrounded by Microsoft, these more computers, more technology. And so throughout the course of my sort of upbringing, gravitated towards a lot of that. And then pretty early on, I actually went to go work as a contractor in Microsoft, and from there, it was just like, well, how can I continue to make a career out of computers and technology and then the internet stumbled into cloud computing and that sort of just accidentally led to where I am now, which is security or information security and, that is a great intersection of the other thing I care about. It's like technology and people because security is more of a people problem than anything else.

We just use computers and software and technology to solve some of these problems. And if I hadn't like continued my path on technology as a career, I probably would have gone down the psychology, psychiatry route, to be completely honest. So it's a very interesting intersection of like, how do I, you know, stop bad actors and attackers while also changing kind of human behavior to prevent the introduction of vulnerabilities or you know, other exploits.

Adam: That's fascinating because the human psychology aspect, because I do feel like so much of security issues are, individuals being compromised, right? Or being tricked or something like that. And so there's a lot of psychological trickery that goes on with those wily black hat hackers.

Kevin: Yeah. It's actually the most likely way that somebody or some organization is going to be exploited is actually via phishing. It's like 70 something percent of all breaches start or involve some kind of social engineering.

Adam: That's amazing. That's amazing. So you grew up in Juneau, Alaska, and your dad started the first ISP or a local ISP in Juneau. What was that like? Was your dad like a town celebrity? Was he answering customer support calls at the dinner table?

Kevin: He was kind of a town celebrity, but not for the reason you think. The ISP was a side gig. was the general manager of like the local town grocery store.

Adam: Ah,

Kevin: Called Super Bear and I don't know, he, him and his friends ran this place. And so they did all kinds of creative local town things and then you know compete with Fred Meyer and Safeway and whatever else So the ISP is like the side gig. I don't recall any like taking, you know, customer support calls or anything like that. You know, at home or anything, but we did get visited by government officials a few different times.

Back then, the internet was very, very open. And so, like kids, which, this is like, kind of true forever, frequently it's kids, get on the internet and do nefarious things. Or do things that look nefarious. And back then it was super easy to track and so, you know, officials would show up and be like, what are you doing?

Adam: That's amazing. Did you just have like racks of servers in the garage or something?

Kevin: No, cuz June was so small and especially back in the whatever early 90s internet just wasn't that prevalent and so we had like a few computers in the house and that was kind of it, you know a bunch of modems it's funny thinking about this in hindsight, being like, oh, well, that's the state capitol is in Juneau, like, well, how much of the government was like flowing through our house.

But I do recall, I think one time. My dad had an article written about him for buying the largest hard drive in the state of Alaska. And it was like a hundred megabyte hard drive. And it made like, it made the news. Yeah.

Adam: It was a hundred megabyte hard drive. It was probably thousands of dollars.

Kevin: Something, probably, something like that.

Adam: That's wild.

Kevin: Yeah. It's a monster.

Adam: So wild. Yeah. So you had all these modems, probably not a quiet household, a lot of like screeching, you know, dial up sounds and things like that.

Kevin: Yeah. It's like comforting, right? The, that sound. Yeah,

Adam: I love that. Oh, what a fun way to grow up. Dad owns the local grocery store and the big ISP in town.

Kevin: Managed the grocery store, owned the ISP.

Adam: Yes. Very cool. So tell me about life now. Tell me about your family. You have a partner. You have two kids. Tell me about how you met your partner. 

Kevin: Oh, this is a good story too, actually. And also involves Behzod.

Adam: Man, Behzod, we owe Behzod a debt of gratitude.

Kevin: Quite a bit. So the reality is right after we moved down here, my, my younger brother, I'm the oldest of three three boys, all chaos. My younger brother, middle brother went to school with my now wife, Jordan in elementary school.

And so she's kind of always been around from, you know, you know, when I was in fourth or fifth grade. Ever since. And then Behzod and I started this band in high school, and I had a license, and my brother didn't, nor did any of my brother's friends. So, I would take my brother to my shows, and he would bring Jordan, and some, you know, usually some other friends as well.

And then while Behzod and I would be playing my brother and Jordan and actually Behzod's sister would hang out together, you know, like offstage. And so, very quickly after that, Jordan and Behzod's sister became best friends and still are today. And so what ended up happening is, like, fast forward from high school all the way through after college.

Behzod and I were living together in actually in his parents house because they were across the country for a year or two or something like that. And Jordan came back home from college to visit Behzod's sister. And, like, Behzod and I were there. And at that point, it was like, hey, what's up? I just kind of took off from there.

Adam: That's cool. That's a lot of history. So you've actually known your wife for like, a really long time.

Kevin: Super long time. Yeah, not very well until around the Hey What's Up time. But you know, for a long time she was just one of my brother's annoying friends, you know.

Adam: Do you ever hold that against her? You're like, remember when you were my brother's annoying friend?

Kevin: No, but she does a good job of reminding me how annoying of an older brother I was.

Adam: She's doing her part. She's doing her part. Awesome. So you and Jordan have two kids, three and a half and five and a half. You get a busy household

Kevin: Yeah, two daughters. I also have two German shepherds that are both girls, and I have an au pair. So I'm outnumbered. 

Adam: Yeah, I'll say in the pecking order of the household, are you like one level below the German Shepherds? Like is there…?

Kevin: Yeah, oh yeah, I'm

Adam: Is there like, you know, the lint in the dryer and then you?

Kevin: I'm above all the non-human objects, but I, well, actually that's not true, because the dogs take higher priority than me sometimes.

Adam: Yep. Love that. That is a full household too. 

Kevin: Yeah, it is. And I, to be honest, I love it. Like, our au pair just went back home to Italy for about a month. And, you know, so it was exactly like the way it was before she showed up, you know, a year ago.

And it felt empty. Like there was something was missing in the house. And so she, you know, gets back in this last week and I was like, ah, yes, everyone's home now.

Adam: All is right in the world. You, I don't need a third dog yet, you know, yeah that's awesome. So tell me about what Jordan does for work. This is an interesting story.

Kevin: Yes, Jordan is a tattoo artist. She owns a shop in town called Moonfall Inc. And it was kind of a random idea she had at the beginning of last year, so 2023 or so. And like I said, I've known her for a long time. She's always been a very creative person. But my like interpretation of her like creativity has always been writing.

Like she was a writer. She went to school for journalism. She's fantastic with words. And then she's like, I want to tattoo people. It's like, okay, I guess we'll figure that out. And she's been great at it, right? She's kind of right out of the gate was pretty booked solid all the time.

You know, very good right away. I have her first tattoo and it's as good as other tattoos that I have from artists that have been working for years. So I'm pretty, pretty happy about that. Yeah.

Adam: That's true love right there. I will be the canvas for your first experimental tattoo and your journey into this career.

Kevin: To be fair she told me she needed a victim and then told me it was me. So, but it's okay. I like it.

Adam: Well, that's great. So yeah, you've got a small business owning spouse. You work at a fast growing, large consumer startup. How did the two of you come to the conclusion that starting a family was a good idea? What was that decision making process like?

Kevin: So this kind of goes back to like 2015 or so. Geez, when did we get together? I think We've been married for seven years and together for 13. So we've been together for a few years not yet engaged or anything like that. And I got a job at PayPal, actually. And so they relocated us both down to the Bay Area.

I lived in San Jose for a year. And at the time, like, we were pretty serious and to be quite honest, I like, at the point that I was in with like my general, like relationships space, I was pretty convinced that, you know, she was the one you know, with an uprooting and, you know, moving down to California and kind of all that uncertainty.

Started driving some conversations, right? We started having like a lot more serious conversations about what does the rest of our life look like? Do we want kids? Like all those kinds of conversations you're supposed to have. And to be completely honest, like that was one of the easier ones. They're like, do you want kids?

Yes. Yes. Great. All right. So that was like kind of how that went. We spent a lot more time talking about like, well, how many kids and what do we want to do and like, how do we want to raise them? You know, we both grew up in environments that are different than the one that we have here the one that we've created.

And so, you know, a lot of that's very intentional. Like, we had a lot of those conversations very early as to, like, what are the kinds of belief systems and the way that we think kids should be, you know, contributing to the house and those kinds of things. Like, all those conversations happened basically because we moved to San Jose, partially because we had no friends for a while.

So, like, we only had each other. You know, so it was like COVID, pre COVID type of deal. partially because like we decided to make this. You know large move very serious kind of commitment and let's sort of force some of those conversations. I actually ended up buying a ring while we were down there and then had some family stuff come up.

So we had to like return to seattle and I ended up having to return, return the ring. I wasn't sure how I was going to pay back my relocation costs to Paypal. Things like that eventually got that all taken care of but you know Then landed back in Seattle bought another ring did the whole thing.

Adam: I'm glad that worked out for you, but um, yeah, it's really interesting that, you know, the easiest part of that conversation was, yeah, of course we w we're going to have kids, like we both want that. That's easy. But then there's a myriad of things that go around with that. Like once we have these humans, what are we going to do with them?

How do we want to raise them? Same way as we were raised different way than we are raised. What are our kind of family principles and priorities? Maybe we can get into that a little bit later. So I'm excited to hear about some of that stuff that the two of you have agreed on and maybe that you've disagreed on.

Kevin: There have been those. Yeah.

Adam: Oh, yeah, always, always.

But what is the earliest memory you have after becoming a dad, or the moment you found out you were gonna be a dad? Like, what sticks in your mind?

Kevin: There's two things that come to mind really fast. Jordan and I like started trying for kids pretty much right after we got married. You know, we'd been together for six or seven years by then. And so, you know, we didn't really have to make that decision. It was more of like, yeah, we got some of the legal stuff out of the way and now, you know, go for it.

And so, we actually, you know, whatever, six months or so, or eight, nine months or so, we're at her dad's house down just south of Portland. And he had his whole family over there. One of her uncles is a big, he's like big into wine. So he's like a wine aficionado. Not like sommelier status, but like loves wine, has a large collection and would bring good wine to all these family gatherings.

It was always like, yes, Uncle Mark is here. We're gonna have good wine. And I remember Jordan trying like it's always red and always white, you know, one of each. She tries one and she's like, that's kind of bad. And I was like, that's weird. He doesn't own bad wine. And then she tries the other one. And she's like, I don't like this one either.

And I looked at her from across the room and I was like, don't you tell me that, you know, and she's like, don't you put that on me, ok we went about the rest of our weekend. And then we get in the car, drive back home. It's about three hour drive or two and a half hour drive from there to back to Seattle.

And she goes, I need you to pull over now. I need Sour Patch Kids.

Adam: Sour, I love Sour Patch Kids.

Kevin: Yeah, I mean, me too, but I was like, okay let's go to the gas station, you know, get some gas. Now that we're back in Washington some Sour Patch Kids and like, I didn't think about it at the time, but we got home and she immediately took a pregnancy test. she clearly was thinking about it and I mean, she came down and was like, guess what? And then like all clicked. It was like, Oh my God. Okay. This is real now.

Adam: No wine. Gotta have the Sour

Kevin: Sour Patch Kids.

Adam: We'll literally rip the door off the car to get out to get them.

Kevin: Yeah. It was pretty wild. Didn't like candy, she didn't like sour things, like, so for me it was off the wall, but also I was like, yeah, Sour Patch Kids are great. And then, the next one that came to mind was right after Harper was born. Harper was a planned C section. And so, you know, we kind of go into the operating room and it's like weird. And I would say like, I don't know, like kind of like going for a meeting, you know, it was 45 minutes in and out.

It's very procedural. There's lots of people that just pull the kid out and they're like, Oh, it's healthy. Here we go and send you away. But I remember you know, Harper coming out and me being like, holy cow, that human is real. Like this concept of like, yes, this human's been growing. Like I know and accepted that for a very long time.

I was very excited, but then, you know, the kid comes out and you're like, oh, that's a real kid. What do I do?

Adam: Where's the instruction manual for this thing?

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much.

Adam: That's amazing. You know, since your kids have been born, what are the most surprising things you've discovered as a dad, or maybe preconceived notions you had that you found to be way off?

Kevin: Again, I have two responses to this. One of which is, and I kind of had always accepted this, that like people that don't have kids, like you can't quite understand it until you have kids. I think lots and lots and lots of parents say that's pretty you know, mild take. But I always had accepted that.

And then right after you have kids, you're like, oh, now I get it. Like there's just something about like you can't turn your brain off, like can't disconnect from your kids. And it just is like that forever after that. You can't just be like, oh, I handed the kid off. It's no longer my responsibility.

It's like I handed the kid off to somebody I trust, like, you know, my wife included, but you're still like, is everything okay? So that was kind of a wild realization. The observation that strikes me as being kind of off the wall is that they learn things so fast. They change so fast. I fly down to San Francisco for work somewhere between six and eight times a year.

And I'm gone for three to five days at a given time. So not a particularly long period of time. And every time I come back, they sound different. Like they have different words. The way they talk is different. Their voice, like the sound of their voice is different. And that's just wild to me, because I don't.

I could go without seeing Behzod, you know, for six months, and he's gonna sound exactly the same as the last time I saw him. So, you know, it's strange seeing like a human change in such a short period of time.

Adam: Yeah. Wow. That is that's pretty profound in just a handful of days. You notice that. Pretty, pretty, pretty crazy. If we popped you in a time machine and you went all the way back to before, let's say you're like Sour Patch Kid time and then your oldest daughter's born you know, you probably are getting a lot of advice from people.

You've got siblings.You know. You've got in laws, you got family, uncles who have great wine maybe not dispensing parenting advice, but so you're getting a lot of advice, you know, you fast forward now, several years into the future, and you've sort of been able to reflect on that advice. What would you tell the younger version of yourself?

What would you say, yes this was a great piece of advice that I got.

Kevin: I think I would probably try to convey the idea that, like, nobody knows what they're doing when they first start doing this. It's kind of shocking when you're leaving the hospital. You know, like, Harper is, like I said, planned C section, so we were there for a couple days, I think, longer than, you know, normal.

But they give you this baby, and they show you how to swaddle it, and that's kind of it. And then so you take this small thing home that has no concept of like living or surviving on its own, and all of a sudden you're like, well, I was a kid yesterday, and now I'm a full blown adult, or at least I have to pretend to be one and so you kind of just make everything up as you go, and that first kid always feels like so serious, like, I can't mess any of this up. You know, like we did like rely on, you know, Google a lot middle of the night, Amazon Prime type of orders and those kinds of things.

But like looking back on it, it's like you take everything so seriously. And then the second kid shows up and you're like, yeah, I got this. Like everything is, still very high stakes. You know, you still have to do everything, but it's way more comfortable the second time around.

Adam: So the advice would be, you know, no, one's got this figured out. Just like

be okay with that.

Kevin: Yeah, exactly. There's no point in trying to be perfect, like you're gonna mess something up and so did everybody else. And you know, do what you think is best and you are keeping an eye out for your kid like they're gonna be fine.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah, they'll only be marginally messed up like all of us.

Kevin: Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's exactly like that, like all of us, like we all have some kind of problems, like none of our parents were perfect, like they all tried very hard, like, you know, you can't absolutely nail it, especially not your first time around.

Adam: Yeah on the flip side. Is there a piece of advice that someone was like emphatic about that? You would tell yourself now just completely ignore this. It doesn't help

Kevin: Ha! it kind of depends. I don't want to like pick on some of the parenting trends really, but I actually think that there's a lot of things that get said on social media about parenting that are rooted in people's experiences. That are just not right. And I think really, that's what most people like, can do.

They can convey their experience to you, and so like, it's a very valid experience. But sometimes it comes across as like, you absolutely should do this, that, or the other thing. And the reality is like, well, no, the context of the experience kind of matters. More than the actual advice.

And so I don't know if I received any bad advice really, to be honest, or if I did, I just, you know, it's not in my brain anymore. I do remember like, you know, my Instagram feed changing, you know, when I started seeing more of this stuff in the middle of the night and all of these, like, you know, like the mom and dad's instagrams or whatever, and they're like, do these things for your kids and act this way and, you know, be perfect.

And also like balance vulnerability and all these other things. And it's like, well, some of that is just does not apply. To be honest, like if I had to give people advice now, it'd be like, stay off of Instagram or like TikTok or whatever social media for like the first year of having a kid.

Cause there are so many bad ideas and they just make you feel inadequate. Like you're missing something or like this parent is doing this thing and I'm totally failing at that. But the reality is you only see the good parts of what they're doing on Instagram. Everybody's failing at something. Just ends up making you feel bad about how hard you're trying and that's uh, you know, insult added to injury, especially because you're not sleeping and like you're having to, you know, effectively brute force your way through having kids and figuring all that out, becoming a parent overnight. Just having something that makes you feel bad on top of all that. It's just not great.

Adam: Yeah. I love that. I love that advice to stay the heck off of social media. Give it like a year.

Kevin: Right. Exactly. Then come back.

Adam: Yeah. That's true. I mean, I think that advice is valid for decades of having kids. Like it, the, because just who you're exposed to on Instagram or whatever else like it just changes and suddenly you're getting advice about your teenager instead of your newborn.

Kevin: That's true. That's true.

Adam: You know, you mentioned that you have this conversation with Jordan when you were talking about having kids and like, what kind of a life do we want for our kids? What are the principles or how do we want to do things the same or differently than maybe we were raised?

What kind of conclusions did you come to with her? What sort of frameworks or guardrails or principles did the two of you want to create for your parenting style?

Kevin: I say there's probably one big one from like my life experience and one from Jordan's life experience really that informed a lot of how we approach raising children. For me, this is like a bit of a hazard of the job, just like what I do and how I like sort of operate in quote unquote reality if you will, you can't stop or prevent your kids from running into bad things in life.

And the more you do that, the less prepared they will be when they're adults. We have this kind of like shocking drop off at 18 where all of a sudden like, you're an adult, you're available, like everything in the world is available to you now. With the exception of buying alcohol and you gotta wait for 21, right?

But like, you can go fight in wars. And if you could like somehow magically protect your kids for a whole entire 18 years from all the bad things, like they're just gonna enter the world and be like, oh my God, what are all these? And they'll struggle with that. So for me, it's like, still want to prevent your kids from running into bad things as much as possible, but also over time, it's like, teach them about these things, like give them context so they can understand why something is potentially bad or dangerous.

So that by the time they are faced with those kinds of realities, because it's a, when not an if, like when they are faced with those kinds of realities, they'll hopefully have some amount of preparation to deal with that.

Adam: Mm hmm.

Kevin: And that's really hard to balance, I think, because, like, some of the especially with daughters, like some of the things that you think about as being like, these bad realities are really, really hard to talk about.

You know, a lot of, things I have not yet talked to my kids about giving them five and three like those conversations are going to have to happen in the next several years. And so I would much rather have the hard conversation and like help my kids be prepared for those things than pretend like they don't exist.

So that's like kind of my sort of like core belief about how like, you should raise kids. The one from like Jordan's experience is Jordan is Native American and Spanish. So she has had a lot of quite frankly like racist experiences, like all growing up. And you know, my kids are half Jordan.

And so like, they're probably going to have very similar experiences in life, unfortunately they're definitely not as white as I am.

Adam: Mm hmm.

Kevin: And this sort of like outcome of that is like we need to raise kids that are conscious of other people's experiences because even though they might not experience them, the sort of flip side is also true, like, other people they're interacting with, like, may not have the same experience that they have, and so therefore might not understand.

And it's not, like, their job to go about and educate people on these things, but the reality is, like, if you are aware of the fact that, like, not everybody's experience is exactly like yours, and how that can impact their lives, and your interactions with other people and whatnot, I think it makes it easier to navigate life.

As opposed to just assuming everyone's just like you and has had the exact same experiences as you and things like that. You know, like, this is a sort of more minor example, but I was talking to my au pair actually about this last night. Jordan and I both grew up in environments where we were not as well off as we are today.

You know, where we are today is very intentional, a result of like how Jordan and I decided to like build our lives. But like this sort of new norm, this is gonna be a new norm for our kids. Whereas like, this was not the, you know, the norm that we were raised in you know, when we were growing up and so it's going to be the same thing with them.

I was like, I don't know how currently to make sure that my kids understand that, like, the position we are in life is a relatively uncommon one, not all of their friends will, you know, be able to go on vacations regularly you know, or have functioning cars, like these kinds of things, like have what they need for school or otherwise.

And so how do you help your kids like understand that in the context of other people's experiences also very, very important.

Adam: Wonderful set of principles. I'm glad that you could select two there. Just to recap I'm going to do my best to kind of, simply summarize these, I will lose a lot of the context, but, you know, on Jordan's side, it's like, make sure that your kids are aware that their lived experience is not the only lived experience out there and try to help create kids that understand that there are other people who have different experiences, different backgrounds, different like privileges or lack of privilege and things like that. I think that's, I think that's a really, really, really good one. And then yours, it's hard to prepare a five and a three year old for reality when they're five and three. So you have to be kind of, you know, sequential in your approach to like exposing them to what reality means. So in some ways your principal and Jordan's have some overlap there's a Venn diagram there.

Because part of kids being prepared for reality is this idea that people that they encounter will have very different perspectives and experiences from them. And that will cause, you know, conflict, it will cause friendship. It will cause all sorts of things to, to happen. So building that resilience in the kids so that they can navigate that world is super important.

Thank you for sharing all that with me.

Kevin: Yeah, I got pretty lucky. Jordan and I, like, values wise are very, very aligned and always have been.

Adam: Yeah.

Kevin: So it'd always be like, we have one of these, you know, hard conversations. It'd be like, how do you feel about X? Then one of us would say like, well, this is how I feel. Another person would be like, oh great, me too.

Adam: Check.

Kevin: Usually just like that.

Adam: Yeah. Well, actually that's a really good segue because the next question that I have for you is where do you and Jordan not agree?

Kevin: To be honest, there's not many. Like I said, like her and I are very aligned on a lot of things. I would say that maybe I'm more willing to like hold the line on stuff than Jordan is. This isn't the case anymore, but it used to be like when I'd travel, I'd come back and there would be like some new part of bedtime, like added. And it's like, it's always because, you know, the kids were like, we're gonna do this now. And that's just how it would go. And I'd come back and be like, there's another step. You know, bedtime is like now two hours long and stuff. And you're like, can we, you know, it used to be two books and now it's three books.

And I got, you know, three songs and a bedtime snack and like rub my back. I'm like, all these things like, holy moly, where did all these come from? Like that doesn't really happen anymore, but like, you know, kids are pushy.

Adam: Yeah.

Kevin: I think I'm more okay with being like, no, we're not gonna do that and just get screamed at for a while. You know, to be fair to Jordan, like she was a stay at home mom for like three, almost four years. And so when that becomes the day job and the night job and the weekend job, and you're just constantly getting screamed at by the kids who want something, you know, completely off the wall. And you're like, well, I can't do that for you, or we're not going to do that for you.

And they just keep screaming. Like you gotta give somewhere. I never have to deal with that. Right. It wasn't stay at home Dad. I hear a lot of it now that I work from home, like, and the kids are all, like, summer break and stuff. So I'm like, oh, it's chaos all the time. But yeah, like to be fair, like you do kind of break somewhere, but by large, I don't, to be honest, like we're trying to think about like where we disagreed on parenting. I don't think there's really been any situations. I think maybe the biggest disagreement is we are not a religious family.

But we have religious family members and so occasionally like the kids will stay with them and, you know, family member would be like, oh, we're going to take the kids to church. And. I grew up religious, and so kind of have an understanding of that environment. And I’m okay with it, you know, for the time being.

Well, Jordan's like, you know, we shouldn't be doing that. The reality is like, they do go to church on occasion. It's, you know, when they're with grandma usually, and you know, it's a thing that grandma wants to do. And so we had conversations about like, whether or not we want that to continue happening.

And that one's been a really interesting one, because like, I'm no longer, no longer consider myself to be a religious person. But I also, I think got a lot of my sort of like moral foundations from the community I grew up in as a religious person. And, you know, that's things like treat other people the way you want to be treated.

You know, like be kind to people, don't make assumptions, don't judge. You know, like some of these like very core parts of like my belief system, like I know came from a church. And like, I would love my kids to also believe those things. On the flip side of that, like, I had a really hard time transitioning out of, you know, being a religious person when I was a teenager and reconciling my actual beliefs with, you know, the beliefs that I had had since childhood.

And like that experience was not really an experience I wanted to put my kids through. You know, if they go down that path themselves and they like consciously make a decision, like that's, you know, their call. But it's so easy to influence kids when they're small. So that's probably like the largest. Argument? Disagreement? It's not even a disagreement. Like, we're all on the same page now.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it required some extensive conversation. That's a good one. Religions come up a few times actually. Not as much as you know other things like snacks before bedtime. But I feel like that's a fundamental concept that people need to get on the same page about

Kevin: I would love to get rid of snacks before bedtime, but I don't know if it's possible, so.

Adam: I mean, I like snacks before bedtime for me, so…So I want to talk a little bit about the kind of intersection between your professional life and your personal life. You work in security. You've worked in technology for a long time. And security and safety on the internet is a big topic. And so, you know, I think you've probably seen some things that the average human has not. So you're aware of a lot more of the kind of dark corners of the internet and human behavior and things like that. How do you think about the relationship that you want your kids to have with technology as they start to use it and get older?

Kevin: Oh boy. Uh, I think about this a lot. so I'm primarily the head of security at Discord, but I also am responsible for safety engineering. And so that's like the engineering team that's looking out for things like abusive material, you know, especially like minor or exploited material and stuff like that on the internet and I think it's one of those things where I don't think you talk to anybody actually believes that it doesn't exist. I think pretty much everyone believes it exists, but I would say most people kind of ignore it as a problem. And I think a lot of companies that have to deal with this have done a very good job of like minimizing the problem, but it's still a big problem.

And being exposed to that on top of like my sort of core job of security and dealing with, you know, bad actors and hackers and people who are like intentionally doing malicious things. It's a weird combination. If you're like, dang, there are so many people out here that are proliferating very bad things on the internet. And it's not just like the blatant stuff it's in the messaging and it's in how we target children. When I say we, I mean like, services on the internet.

Adam: Sure. The royal we. The broad we, yes.

Kevin: Yeah. And like that, like, you know, there are people out there doing it. It's in my opinion, it's inappropriate to target children.

Like they're so in it, like influenced by the things that they see and interactions I have. And you know, we've seen this with like the social media arc, for example, of like the terrible body image. And things where, you know, kids are like, I'm expected to be a certain way. And it's like, well, social media only shows you the perfect.

You know, manicured side of things

Adam: It's like that parenting example that we said. Like, you're only getting the very fine digest of the perfect parenting advice, you know?

Kevin: Yeah. And so for me, it's just a little bit of a, actually it's like an affirmation of my, the thing I said earlier of like, prepare your kids for reality because hopefully they escape it, right? Like I personally have never been subject to like exploitive material.

But that's just my, quite frankly, like lucky experience. You know, a lot of people have been and I would much rather prefer that my you know, kids are prepared for it and in a safe way and like not a scarring and like, you know, ruin their, mentality, you know, about the internet, about people kind of way.

Then the inverse of like, just pretend like it doesn't exist. And then hopefully they figure out how to deal with it someday when they're faced with some of these circumstances. So, it's tough. It's a bit of a reminder on like a regular basis of how bad, bad could actually be.

Adam: I've talked to a lot of parents who work in technology, obviously the name of the podcast, startup dad, and most of the companies are tech companies who are like, you know, we don't do any screens in the house. It's sort of the opposite of how like their professional lives, which is like, I'm all in front of a screen.

I'm constantly, you know, do you have any particular approach to that or way of thinking about, that?

Kevin: I pretty firmly believe that like moderation is key. The reality is that like screens and technology are not only just like an integrated part of everybody's lives these days but like they will continue to be that way. And we're moving more things into the quote unquote technology space.

You know, like my kids are in school and here's a great example. My oldest is going into kindergarten this year, and it's just like a standard kindergarten public school happens actually to have the same like mascot as the elementary school I went to. So like super fun kind of connection point with my daughter.

It's like you go walk around the school and it's like the exact same building that everybody's gone to school in. You know, built in like the 60s or 70s. It's like half brick and half not, and you know, classrooms and stuff stuck to the walls. They're wearing like, yes, this is elementary school, and then they're like, here's the iPad to check them in and out, and here's an RFID card to scan to get on the bus, and there's an app where we're going to send you all of your communications, and you can like, vote on things in the app, and you can talk to the teachers and whatnot.

I'm like, none of that existed when I was a kid. You know, and like, is it necessary for education? I would argue yes. Like, technology makes people more efficient and more effective. And, you know, having like a quick line to the teacher, I think is also great. You know, especially just today's world is different.

And so, that has been kind of an interesting experience being like technology is getting more and more integrated everywhere. It's not just like me and my job because I work you know, a tech startup. So bring us all the background of the iPads and like screens and whatnot. Some amount is okay.

They do turn into kind of like, have you seen Inside Out 2?

Adam: Yes. I sure have.

Kevin: That character anxiety, like that super high energy, like buzzing all the time, like you give them too much screen and they just turn into that, and you know, there's, they're touching and screaming everything, and they get really mad when you take it away, and so we kind of have to be careful about how much you give it to them.

But like, on the flip side, you don't give it to them at all, like, here's a personal experience of mine. I grew up with no soda at all. Like, not allowed in the house. Like, when I went to friends houses, I could have it. And so I would, you know, when I was a teenager, go to my friend's house and we'd play Halo all night long and drink a ton of, you know, Dr. Pepper Mountain Dew and whatever else. You know, just nerd stuff and like I had developed a kind of a really bad habit. So right out of high school, I went to work at Microsoft in this call center and I had free soda, just a machine. You just like open the door and pull the soda out. Like, you know, that's a common like tech benefit.

And so I immediately drank way too much, you know, gained more weight than I ever have in my entire life. Like that was the heaviest I've been in my whole

Adam: Wow.

Kevin: Until I was like, I need to stop doing this. But you know, say what you want about my personality of like, oh, I must drink more soda. But you know, I didn't grow up with it.

So it was like very much a novelty when I finally became an adult and I didn't really understand that, like, drinking a ton of soda all the time is probably not a great idea. You know, and so that's where I developed my, like, sparkling water habit, really. So that was the offset, the soda, and

yeah, much better to have it but Topo Chico is expensive.

Adam: It's true.

Kevin: And so like for me, I'm like, you know, if we don't have any screens, any iPads, like it's going to turn into one of those situations is my bet. And so moderation is key.

Adam: Yeah. It kind of goes back to that principle that you mentioned, which is like, you know, you can't insulate your kids from what they're going to experience when they turn 18. So if you say no soda, For your whole life, and then you turn 18 and they're out on their own, they're turned away to college or work or whatever, and they're surrounded by soda.

They might be like, oh, let me try that. Oh, that's pretty good. Let me have like a hundred more of them. And the same can be true of technology usage, right? So I think the moderation that sort of exposing at the right moments in time and teaching them responsibility and how to self moderate pretty key.

Your job, you know, you're leading security for a massive consumer application. Like Discordhas a lot of users and those users can use it around the clock. 24 seven. That's intense. That's intense as the boss, right? You know, not that you're not, you're the head, but you run a probably a pretty large organization.

My assumption is that if you work in security and sort of safety and things like that, you gotta be on 24 seven. That seems relatively incompatible with family life. And so I'm curious what strategies you've employed to manage that time effectively between this high stakes security job and your family commitments.

Kevin: I don't know if there's a spicy take as much as maybe like a lukewarm take these days, but I do think that you can do a job like this and have a healthy work life balance. It maybe doesn't look necessarily like specifically 40 hours a week, only Monday through Friday, especially in a line of work like this, but it doesn't have to be you're working all waking hours either. And for me, it's a bit of a long term strategy type of deal. Like, I will not always be doing this job. You know, at this company or even this kind of job. Like my kids will always be around. And I would prefer that when I look back on life, they're like, oh yeah, my dad worked hard, but was also around and available.

And like went to my dance competitions and my soccer games and whatever else, you know, they get into. I want their reflection to be that I was present and engaged. And so that necessitates kind of like containing work. Without getting like way into like the technical nitty gritty, before I was in security, I ran network operations centers for a couple of different places which is like the 24/7 mission control style, you know, 40 desks in a room with a bunch of screens.

Incident management, you know, Xbox live was one of them. So Xbox live goes down, you know, my team is on the hook for making sure it comes back online. So people can continue to play games. So I had this background in incident management and basically like the monitoring and observability side. So when you get into security, I applied a lot of that same sort of stuff there where we have a detection engineering team that builds detections and builds systems and tools to let us know when things are, you know, going sideways.

You know, connect that to pagers and whatever else. The whole point of having like a robust detection engineering team is so that you can put your phone or computer down and know that you'll get paged if something is going wrong. We've set up a bunch of like sort of operational systems around that.

Like they don't always page me directly, right? Bad things page me, really bad things page me directly among other people. And then I have lieutenants that, you know, I spent a lot of time and energy hiring and coaching and mentoring. And you know, they're very qualified to also do some of those same things.

So like we have a group of people that can respond, you know, we've got a large well, it's actually not a large team. It's a pretty small, but very mighty team of like very capable people who can also respond. And so you have this like kind of matrix group of people where somebody's going to catch things if something goes wrong and that gives me the opportunity to put the computer down at the day.

The other thing is I'm just very good at saying no to stuff and having kids has made me better at that.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. You get to use your kids as an excuse. Sorry. Can't kids gotta do this thing. Kids.

They need to eat.

Kevin: I mean, yeah, that's a tough one because like the reality is like, yeah, always going to prioritize my family over, you know, my job. But it has to be balanced with like, my job is also protecting a lot of other people all over the world. And so, some people don't want to hear that, like, they don't want to hear that, you know, I think my family is more important than their family.

And the reality is like, at the end of the day, I believe my family is the most important. But also like, I can understand being in people's shoes, where they're like, I asked for help and somebody else told me that their family was more important than mine. And so that is also a balance of like, what can I do to make sure that we are achieving our goals in a reasonable way such that I can also, you know, get off the computer at the end of the day at a reasonable hour and, you know, be engaged with my kids and not, you know, constantly be looking at my phone, you know, getting paged and woken up overnight. And so really my approach, really to a lot of this is actually to live the life that I want the rest of my organization to be living, like have a healthy work life balance, know when to say no, know that we can't stop everything, like we cannot prevent everything.

There's an infinite number of problems. And so perfect is not the goal. Solving every problem is not the goal. Having a healthy work life balance so that we can do our best for other people is the goal. Architecting kind of the whole organization and our process and procedure around that.

And I think we've done a pretty good job.

Adam: That's great. Have you tried to explain to your five year old and three year old what you do for work?

Kevin: No you know, it's funny. They know I work on computers.

And then they see Discord and they're like, oh, dad's working. And I'm like, no, I'm talking to my friends right now. And they like, don't understand that Discord is, you know, a chat app.

and I'll, you know, like I'll be sitting there, you know, shit posting or whatever with, you know, maybe sometimes with work people, but like sometimes it's just my friends and they'll see it and they'll be like, work.

Like, okay,

Adam: That's funny.

Kevin: I'll explain this to you someday.

Adam: Yeah.

It's probably easier for them to understand what Jordan does. Like, look, see this tattoo. Mom did that.

Kevin: Oh yeah, yeah,

they understood that one pretty quick. And actually Jordan has a tattoo that my daughter drew. So my daughter drew it and like she tattooed it on herself and stuff like that. So they're always like, look, we gave mom a tattoo. And it's like, you didn't give mom a tattoo. Mom tattooed that you just drew it.

Adam: Yeah. Oh, I love that. I love that. Just a couple more questions: What's a mistake that you've made as a dad?

Kevin: I think that it's important to be aware of kind of your reactions to things and how rooted they are in like your experience and hold yourself accountable to whether or not that's the right reaction you should have towards your kids. And this is another one of those things you can't be perfect at.

But there have definitely been times where I've had certain reactions and then later on you're like, that is not how I should have reacted in this situation. You know, but it's like what I knew, or it's like what I observed. You know, or like, I was frustrated. you kind of have a tendency to Maybe think or believe that the kids are going to understand, but, you know, you've got many, many more years of experience and like fully developed brain and things like that.

And so, like, they're not going to understand. So kind of making this assumption that the kids are going to understand, like, oh, I'm upset. I need room. I need space. I need whatever, you know, they don't necessarily understand that. And so, I think that's probably the one that weighs on me the most of, you know, you like to look back on reactions to things and you're like, oh, that is not the way I should have done that.

And so then you have to, you know, go stand up and talk to your kids and, you know, like the memory is short. So if it's been too long, you're like, well, that one's kind of just gone. Like, there's no way they're going to remember that or like what it was like. So. I'm trying to be better about, like, when I have those reactions, like, recognizing it, like, in the moment, and then be like, you know what?

That was not the right way to do this. Let me try this again. But I wasn't always like that is the thing. So, like, it's a learning experience.

Adam: Yeah, I was going to ask you what you do to recover from that situation, but it sounds like just, you know, eating a slice of humble pie and naming it, saying something to your kids, you know, to the extent that they can understand, but like trying to do that as quickly as possible while it's fresh for them.

Kevin: That's really the move is, like, recognizing it when it happens so you can, in a situation, address it. And a lot of times it's, you know, you stop and you say, I shouldn't have done that, or I shouldn't have said that. What I meant was this instead, you know, and depending on what the situation is, like talk to the kid about it, three year old doesn't really understand.

So you kind of have to like make it super simple and very direct. You know, but as I get older, they start to understand more that like, oh, the initial reaction maybe was not the right one. Yeah. It's okay. It's okay. A.  to show vulnerability, right and the hold yourself accountable for that thing like even though they're a kid.

I think not all parents and not all adults, you know, give kids that kind of time of day.

Adam: Yeah. What is something that you had to give up after you became a father?

Kevin: I don't know if I had to give up really anything. There are a lot of things that I stopped caring about. And then there are things that I have dialed the way back on. So, I'm a very social, very like extroverted, outgoing person. And having spent a lot of time in this, in the local music scene, you know, I know a lot of people around town, a lot of bar owners, a lot of like club and venue owners and things like that.

And like, oh, like, you know, Jordan, I used to go out on the weekend, like every weekend, you know, see a show, going out with people you know, go hang out, you know, some of these bars and just have fun and drink and, you know, come back home at two o'clock in the morning. Like that doesn't happen anymore.

Adam: Yeah.

Kevin: But I also stopped caring about it. That was a weird one for me. It was like kind of overnight being like, oh, I actually don't care about doing this anymore. I don't know if I count that as giving it up. What I have had to dial way back on though, is that music is very, very time consuming.

And that one's been a struggle. Cause that's kind of my outlet for things like how I, you know, de stress and unwind you know, and express myself. And so figuring out the balance of that, like after kids was really rough. Like I can't turn these amps on. really anymore. They're so loud. And like, when I was the only one, like, who cares?

But you know, the kids are like, I hate it! And you're just like, okay, I'll teach you how to play this someday. That and then dial back on like video games. You know, I like video games a lot. I think music is more important to me than video games, but those are also time consuming. played a lot of Destiny over the last, you know, 10 years.

I worked on Destiny so like, kind of a special place in my heart. Well, it's just a fun game, but it is a time sink. And so I was like, oh, I don't really have time for that anymore. Or like, you know, I'd play it in the morning and the kids would wake up, and they'd just get right in my face and hit the controller and all these other things. Like, well, okay, I guess I'm done now. So trying to figure that one out has been interesting. They love watching me play Stardew Valley, though. They're like, play the farm game, like name the chickens, crazy things. It's like, okay, sounds good.

Adam: Awesome. You mentioned that someday you'll, you know, teach your daughters how to play music is that a thing that you hope that they get into as they get older, that they may be slightly musically inclined. 

Kevin: I don’t care so much about they getting into music as much as I care about them having some kind of creative outlet. I think that's really important. Before I discovered guitar, I was. I don't know how I even frame this, like a hand artist. Like I drew a lot, I painted a lot. I made things with my hands. Like that was a thing I was always known for as a kid and discovered guitar.

All that stopped, you know, it was like music moving forward. I don't like to any of that stuff anymore. And I think it's really important. And so like my oldest daughter is really into dance. And we'll see how that goes over the next couple of years, obviously, but like, that's a different type of creative outlet and you know, silver requires kind of the same things that I think, like, values wise are very important, But like, you know, like working hard and like honing your craft and those kinds of things, but also, like, it's just different than like doing a job or doing homework or school, like, you can kind of express yourself.

So that's the thing I care about more is them having that. Like, I like how they try to play these guitars, especially because these guitars are like the size of them and it's hilarious. But I mean like if the hands don't really work and so like maybe someday they'll figure it out, you know, I'm all self taught and I think that they'll be capable of doing that as well if they really want to, but the creative outlet is really the thing that matters to me.

Adam: Cool. All right. My last question for you is how can people follow along with your journey, be helpful to you? Where should folks go to find

Kevin: Oh, geez, I don't really do the internet that much to be completely honest. I have a Twitter account that I don't use at all. I would say I'm most active on LinkedIn, but I only talk about like security stuff on LinkedIn. So like, if that's interesting, go ahead follow me or whatever.

And I just have a website, but again, I never updated it. Like it's basically just my resume and like how to contact me.

Adam: Yeah. Well, we will direct everyone to LinkedIn to talk to you about security things.

Kevin: Perfect. Sounds great.

Adam: All right. Are we ready for our lightning round?

Kevin: Let's do it. Do I just have to, do I have to answer these as fast as possible? Is that how this works?

Adam: There is but one rule. I ask you a question and you answer it as fast as possible with the first thing that comes to mind and then without judgment, sometimes with laughter, but definitely without judgment, we move on to the next question.

Kevin: That sounds good.

Adam: Yeah. All right, here we go. What is the most indispensable parenting product that you've ever purchased?

Kevin: Oh my gosh insulated coffee mugs. Holy smokes.

Adam: Oh, what is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased?

Kevin: Any number of the bassinets that we purchased.

Adam: Finish this one sentence. The ideal day with my kids involves this one activity.

Kevin: Go to the park.

Adam: Which one of your kids is your favorite?

Kevin: I don't have a favorite kid.

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

Kevin: Having kids? Is that the answer?

Adam: That's great. What is your go to dad wardrobe?

Kevin: Oh, it's like T shirt, pants, hoodie. Like simple.

Adam: Cool. New Balance shoes. Are there New Balances involved?

Kevin: no, no, I'm a Vans guy. I was a skater as a kid. Now I'm like a dad that wears Vans.

Adam: Awesome. Cool dad. How many parenting books do you have in your house?

Kevin: Not a clue. Many. None of which I have read.

Adam: That was my next question. How many parenting books have you read cover to cover? The answer is zero. What has been the favorite age for your kids so far?

Kevin: Two answers come to mind. I actually really like, like, the 18 to 24 month range because their personalities start to come out and you're like, wow, there's a human in there! And then I also don't like anything after four. So far.

Adam: What is your least favorite age?

Kevin: Three. Oh my gosh. Three-nager. Like, people talk about terrible twos, but three-nager is way worse.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah, how many dad jokes do you tell on average in a given day?

Kevin: I would say a material percentage of the words that I say are dad jokes. And I was like, from before I was a dad. So the joke then immediately became as soon as I had kids, I'm like, ah, yes, I can now, I'm now allowed to say these things.

Adam: Right. Right. Your kids are probably not old enough yet, but maybe. What was the most embarrassing thing you've ever done in front of your kids?

Kevin: My daughter's in this dance company and every year they do a dad's dance. And two years ago, I actually didn't find out about it until like the week before, so I didn't get a chance to do it. I would have loved to do that one. This year's dance was like pop starlets or divas or something like that.

And so I had to dress up as Britney Spears from the Oops, I Did It Again video. I also had to dress up as Tina Turner, and what was the other part of that? There was like a Taylor Swift part of it too, and so I had to learn like all this choreography from all these videos, which are all like all, you know, women led videos, and so like, my daughters loved it, but I'm like, I don't move like this, so I did that in front of like the whole, the whole, I did it twice. I did it in front of like the whole dance company and all the friends and family. And then, for some reason, the dance company wanted to do it again in like the town parade. So we did it a couple of weeks ago in front of the whole freakin town, and I was not a fan of that.

Adam: That's amazing. Kevin as Tina Turner would really just like that's like chef's kiss.

Kevin: it was very Frilly, yeah.

Adam: Yeah. What is the most absurd thing that one of your Children has ever asked you to buy for them?

Kevin: Oh, this is not where I thought this question was going. Buy for them?

Adam: Yeah,

Kevin: I can't think of anything like absurd they've asked me to buy for them. They've asked me to do absurd things. And the way I thought you were going with this was my daughter, when she was like two or something like that, she got just unusually upset.

Like, she was screaming. She was so mad because the sun wouldn't stop looking at her. And it was like, make it stop. I'm like, I can't do that.

Adam: Make the sun stop.

Kevin: Yeah, I had to be like, the sun does what it wants. I don't know how to describe that any other way.

Adam: That's amazing. Oh Man, okay. What is the most difficult kids TV show that you've had to sit through?

Kevin: Oh, man. Coco Melon.

Adam: Coco Melon is the front runner on this show It's the front runner for sure

Kevin: It's bad.

Adam: Yeah. What is your favorite kids movie?

Kevin: This is like recency bias, but Inside Out 2 was really good.

Adam: Top notch love that whole series. Yeah. What is the worst experience that you've ever had assembling a children's toy or a piece of furniture?

Kevin: I don't really have bad experiences like with that because I like to build things. I would say maybe like if I had to pick one, it would be like taking something over for Jordan after she gets upset about building the thing. Yeah. There's been a few of those.

Adam: That's awesome. How long can a piece of food sit on the floor in your house and you will still eat it?

Kevin: Don't really care.

Adam: Infinite time.

Kevin: Yeah, infinite time. Not infinite, but way longer than is appropriate, probably. Especially given like dogs and I would just leave the back door open. They're in and out all day long. Them and the kids. It's a mess here.

Adam: All right. Three more for you. What nostalgic movie can you just not wait to force your kids to watch with you?

Kevin: Star Wars. Like the original trilogy. Yeah.

Adam: Okay. Okay. Have you started telling your kids back in my day stories yet?

Kevin: Absolutely. It's amazing. Yeah. How quickly those came out.

Adam: Is this like a daily?

Kevin: We didn't use to have iPads.

Adam: A daily occurrence probably.

Kevin: Because we talked about how we didn't used to have iPads. We used to have to sit through commercials. Like you can't skip an ad on TV. And Wi Fi. We did not have Wi Fi.

Adam: No. Okay. And finally, I know you only have two kids, but what is your take on minivans?

Kevin: I would rather have a large SUV.

Adam: Okay. You’re team SUV. Got it. All right. Well. Kevin, this concludes the lightning round. I really appreciate you going on this journey with me today on startup dad. Thanks so much for taking the time.

It has been wonderful.

Kevin: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Adam. This is pretty great conversation.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Kevin Hanaford. 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. You can join a community of over 11,000 subscribers and stay up to date on my thoughts on growth, product, and parenting by subscribing to the Fishman AF Newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter.com. Thanks for listening. See you next week.