Work-life Balance Is Overrated | Siqi Chen (father of 2, co-founder/CEO Runway)

StartupDad_SiqiChen

Siqi: I'm like, college is a waste of time. There's a Teal fellowship where Peter Teal is paying people to not even go to college. And she's very much like, but no, they're going to like meet people and they're going to be credentialed and all these things.

I'm like, who knows if Stanford is even going to exist 10 years from now? We don't know. 

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 Siqi Chen. Siqi is the co-founder and CEO of Runway, the finance platform you don't hate. He was also the president, chief product officer, and CEO of Sandbox VR, the VP of growth at Postmates and sold his first company to Zynga in 2010. He is an angel investor who has invested in companies like Touch of Modern, Amplitude, Italic, and Clubhouse. He's a husband and the father of two daughters. In our conversation today, we spoke about the idea of work-life balance and how to accept the reality that work is a part of life, and life is a part of work.

We talked about sharing the load with your spouse, how to exercise with your kids and using technology as a tool for leverage. I loved hearing how Siqi’s oldest daughter is creatively using chat GPT to build games and explore her curiosity. Siki shared his triumphs and struggles transparently and openly.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Adam: I would like to welcome Siqi Chen to the Startup Dad podcast. Siqi, it is a pleasure having you here today. Thank you so much for joining me.

Siqi: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here today.

Adam: All right, we're going to jump right in. So first of all, I should say I did not know you were a dad. Until maybe you were added or we were both added to a similar parenting WhatsApp group. And then the questions started coming fast and furious about how do you teach your kids this, what do you do with this?

And then I saw on LinkedIn, because that is my home on the internet, that you had a written uh, pretty extensive fairly popular post about work life balance and I want to jump in and talk about that I'm going to read snippet of it and you said work life balance is overrated implicitly having to balance work and life implies that they're separate things.

The reality is that work is part of life. Life is part of work. Once you accept that reality, then you open up the opportunity to integrate the two in a way that serves you all around rather than trying to trade them off against one another. I think that is a profound assessment of work life balance.

And so I was excited to talk to you about this today, I feel like there are two camps on work life balance. There's either the camp you are in, which is like, it's a farce. You gotta like figure it out. It's work and life. They mash together.

And then there's the other camp, which is like, oh, you must achieve the mythical balance between the work and the life. And like, there's a clear defined lines and things like that. So. I want to ask you, when did you come to the realization or the opinion that you now hold about work life balance?

And then how do you do this integration versus trading them off?

Siqi: I think it's a mental model that's crystallized probably over the past half a decade or so. As I started Runway and I also got into more exercising than I did before. I've been running almost every day and started boxing and you know, just to break down that quote a little bit, you know, it's not so much that, I'm saying you have to work all the time or balance is not important, but inherent in the divide between work and life, the phrase implies that work is somehow not a part of life.

And I think like that is to me sort of a toxic mindset in terms of just mental health. It's important to spend time with your family. It's important to exercise. And It's also important to have a purpose in life when you're creating things with groups of people. That's all a part of life. And not thinking of them as trade offs, but thinking about in terms of how one feeds into the other, I find to be a lot more of a mentally healthy and balanced mindset to have.

So for example, if the way you think about work life balance is that there is a trade off between the two, then going to the gym is a trade off against work. But in reality, it isn't. A healthy body gives you a healthy mind and lets you be more productive. Spending time with your family, having great personal relationships, versus having a very unhealthy marriage.

Also makes you not very good at work. And so the, it's the word that I have a problem with and the mindset that word lends to that made me come to that realization. And it made me want to write that.

Adam: I love those two examples to the exercise one, and then the having a good relationship with your spouse. I completely agree on both. I think the exercise one is fascinating because I often find, I do a lot of creative work now writing and doing this podcast. And I often find that a lot of my breakthroughs happen when I'm exercising.

It's like it unlocks another part of my brain. And when I'm not doing that, I feel less creative. I don't feel like I'm tapping into all those. Parts of me. So fascinating to think about that as like an enabler versus a, an either or. 

Siqi: And I think the subtle thing is it goes in other direction too, right? When you think about how you develop a great work culture and who you want to be as a manager. You think about am I supporting the people I'm working with? Am I listening to them? And often for me, I, for a long time, I realized, wow, am I putting as much intention in my relationship with my wife as I am with the people I'm working with?

Adam: Yeah.

Siqi: Am I listening? Am I supporting? what? I have the same conversation I would have with my wife if I had the same mindset as I had with a report. And it goes in both directions, too, and I think that's why, like, treating work as a separate thing that you spend time on in order to earn the capital and the right to do other things, I think, is inherently not a great mindset to have.

Adam: Yeah. All right. Well, I want to go back in time to Siqi as a kid. So tell me about what life was like growing up. Where did you grow up? What were you like as a kid? 

Siqi: So I had a strange upbringing in that I grew up in China, so I was born there in a northern part of China called Dalian. And I was raised by my grandparents up to age four and my parents were actually in the states. So my dad was the first batch of students after the cultural revolution to go to grad school in America. He was a physicist and my mom was with him. When I was four, I went to America with my parents would have been very rarely seen up to that point.

And so we were in Salt Lake city and Georgia and in LA as my dad worked location change. And at eight my dad didn't get tenure as a physicist. And so he was trying to figure out how we're going to support the family. And so my mom and I, we've actually moved back to China with my extended family for four years, apart from my dad.

While he was like trying to figure out how to get a job. And he ended up selling insurance door of door for a time and ultimately got a job as a software engineer. And four years later, we moved back with him. And so I was 12 when that happened. So between zero and 16, every four years I was rotating between China and United States.

And at the time it's just seemed like, when you're a kid, that's all you know, right? Like, this is my life, this is what happens, it's pretty normal it's only looking back, especially after you have children, you realize, like, that is a really unusual and strange upbringing but, that's what my early life was like.

The one thing that I remember the most is like a single incident was, I remember riding a tricycle in my grandparents yard, I think when I was like three or so, and I wanted to go outside of this yard and I was like pedaling my tricycle going out the door. And I think my grandparents like closed the door.

They wouldn't let me out. And I remember not saying anything, but turning around and riding the bicycle, the other direction and right through the garden, the vegetable garden they have, and they're like, no, no, no, nevermind. Come back, come back. And they opened the door again. I'm like, okay, cool. I'll go outside. Somehow that reminds me of a lot of like what has formed my personality over the next few decades.

Adam: I was going to say sewing your entrepreneurial roots, right? Right there. Well, if you close this door, I'm just going to open my own.

Siqi: I'm going to trample through your garden.

Adam: I love that. That is quite a wild you know, I mean, like you said, that's what you knew as a kid, but upon reflecting, you know, as an adult and with your own family, like, probably haven't moved your family every 4 years clear across the world back and forth and a lot of, you know, popular reading would say, hey, those are pretty formative years of a kid's life.

Like, that's a lot of disruption and change and things like that, but you seem to have turned out just fine.

Siqi: Yeah.

Adam: As far as I can tell in this podcast, at least.

Siqi: I'm doing all right. You know, like, I think my parents feel proud of where I am. I feel pretty good about where I've been in life. Could be better. Could be worse. Right. But yeah, I think that does make you think, especially after you have children. They have have a very different life.

It is in almost every way substantially more comfortable and usual and normal. And to what extent is that good, right? know, there is, a lot of very successful people who have like great childhoods and then there are successful people who are like motivated by childhood trauma that's haunted them for many, many years, right?

Like Elon Musk being like a  most famous example. It does make you think, but I think that perspective is helpful, right? You realize that. It's okay. Like, you can really mess things up and they'll turn out the way they turn out. So it gives a sense of equanimity when you're a parent.

Adam: That's a good philosophy and approach to have. So you do have a partner and two kids, which I alluded to. How old are your kids and how many times should they have moved back and forth to China by now?

Siqi: Uh, two and one times, respectively. But, yeah, I have two daughters. I have a daughter named Alessandra who's nine. And our younger one is Mira and she's four. And yeah, and I have a partner, Yi Ding, and she is an investor, a stay at home mom, but in past life she was an actress and a movie producer, and we met in between those jobs.

Adam: Wow. So how did the two of you meet? And I guess where?

Siqi: In the club is my usual answer, but it was in the actual club. That's the cool answer. The less cool answer is it was at an event at a club at the game developer conference.

Adam: That is a decidedly less cool answer, but I'll allow it.

Siqi: So I was at a game developer conference and I just sold my first company to Zynga and she was gonna host the Chinese version of The Apprentice.

Adam: Oh, wow.

Siqi: And so we got introduced through a bunch of friends independently, like three or four different friends that night said, hey, you should meet so and so.

And we met and she told me she wanted to build a game for this Chinese version of The Apprentice she was going to host. And I said, I'll do it. I work for Zynga. I'm like really good at games. I wasn't going to do it, but she was like really cute, but and that's how we met. The best story about that moment in time was in one of our first conversations we started talking about pets.

And she told me how she had a dog, and this dog had a really funny name. It was a German Shepherd named Cat. And I said, that is an adorable name for a dog. And I told her, you know, I have a cat. And she's like, what's her name? I'm like, I named her Dog. And then she's like, no way. So my friend walks over and I said, Mary what's the name of my cat? She goes, dog. True story.

Adam: And did you actually have a cat named Dog

Siqi: No, I mean, my, my friend, Mary, who was walking by, I asked her unprompted, what's the name of my cat? She goes, dog, because that was the name of my cat.

Adam: Wow. This is amazing. This is like, there never were a more perfect union than that situation.

Siqi: What are the odds?

Adam: Game developers, conference apprentice, you, first time selling your company to Zynga, cat named dog, dog named cat. I mean, it's amazing. What a match. So what was the decision like for the two of you to start a family?

Siqi: I don't know that it was a decision that was made. We wanted to get married and we did, we ended up having three weddings over the course of a year and a half. And after the wedding we decided that, yeah we want to have kids, so we're going to start. And it happened very quickly.

It happened, I think like, nine months after the wedding date. And I don't know that I was like much of a conversation decision. It's like, something that we kind of knew that we were going to do after we got married. In retrospect, it probably should have been more of a conversation.

Adam: And why do you say that?

Siqi: I don't know that we were communicating and being as prepared as we needed to be as parents.

It just kind of seemed like the next thing that you do in life. You know, you meet somebody, you get married, you have kids. But I don't think we really like talked through, okay, how is this going to work? What are the expectations? And so we probably should have had like more of a conversation because when we discover that Yi was pregnant, it was like, wait, wait, we didn't expect it to be that quick. Oh, my God. Right. But you're never prepared for your first. And I think my impression though, is that most parents have been more intentional than we were about that particular decision.

Adam: It's interesting and we're going to get into some of that, some of what you do now around intentionality, but I have heard many founders come on the show and talk about their company as their other kid, in your case, your third kid is Runway. Now you don't strike me as a passive dad that is only prioritizing that third kid, right?

So you do strike me as someone who's fairly involved. You know, we've had some exchanges about education and various other things in our, parenting groups. So how do you and your wife load balance the parenting responsibilities in your house? I imagine that is something that you eventually had to talk 

Siqi: Yeah. 

Adam: And very likely after pregnancy. But yeah, how do you two sort it out?

Siqi: I would say not so well for quite a while. And this is like probably the biggest lesson learned. So this is nine years ago, right? And I was much younger then, and we were not prepared and I was running a different startup at the time. And I think one of the traps that you get into is, you know, she gave up her career and decided to become a stay at home mom, I had a startup run.

And there is some level of like inevitable feeling of like this undertone of entitlement that you have as a husband where, okay, well, she stays home and she's going to take care of the kids and I have a startup and it's like more than full time job. It's going to spend a lot of time there.

And so, you know, I get to do the fun stuff. And that doesn't work as you can probably imagine, like, unsurprisingly. And so, you know, for me, the way we've divided it up now is like almost every day or every other day I take my older out for a one to two hour run. And that's like one of the things that we spend the most time on.

And that's great. It's like part of life. Exercise is part of life. It's great for the company, but I get to spend amazing time with my older one. I mean, we're running five or six miles at a time. She loves it. That's one way we do it. And the other thing is dinner is sacrosanct. It's on my calendar. And the requirement from that we agreed to is five out of seven days.

Like clockwork we're going to have like dinner and the other two days. Yeah. You get to like have a meeting or, you know, go out and have dinner, but five out of seven days, that's the expectation. That's a big one. And then outside of that, education. What are the things that our kids are going to do outside of class?

How are they going to learn? What classes are going to take? That is split, I think fairly evenly between the two. So she does a lot of the writing and extracurriculars and for things like writing and reading and AI and math. That's a lot of me.

Adam: I love that you've identified very explicit things and activities and actions that you do. And the dinner being sacrosanct is a good one. And then even down to having a defined number of days. Five out of seven, because it is, I think a little unrealistic when you're building a company to say, you know what, seven out of seven days, I'm going to be able to be home.

Nothing's going to come up. There's not going to be an investor. There's not going to be a recruit that I have to hire, but you know, you can plan around those couple of days.

Siqi: Yeah. To be stress free, that hasn't been always the case though. And one of the things that trigger this is, I am not a person who actually eats a lot. For a while, it was only eating on weekends.

Adam: Whoa.

Siqi: So actually there were like no meal times. And I just remember our child saying like, Hey, is it normal that we don't eat together as a family as often?

And I thought it was like, it was normal for me when I was growing up.

Adam: yeah.

Siqi: But it's not normal. It shouldn't be normal. And that's when we made a change.

Adam: Well that's good and good on your kid for pointing that out and asking the question. Probably not from a place of, you know, accusation or anything, but curiosity like kids have. So. Aside from shock and surprise, what is the earliest memory that you have of becoming a dad?

Siqi: I Mean, it's the moment you hold them for the first time, small, delicate, you're like, wow, this is it. But the thing I actually remember to be completely transparent is the first time going to the supermarket.

Adam: Okay. 

Siqi: You're in a hospital, you’re not sleeping, you're trying to get them to latch, right.

And. It's like two or three days into this, you decide, okay, well, we need to go to the nearest Safeway or no, it's Rowley's in Millbrae and we need to go get a snack and drink run. and being there and feeling like, this feels the exact way I feel like if I'm in the Maldives or something. This half an hour was like, oh wow, this is vacation.

This is incredible. I've never experienced this selection of goods before. The other thing I'll remember, and it's actually weirdly all shopping related is, you know, there's a store called Bye Bye Baby.

Adam: Oh yeah.

Siqi: So we went before the baby came and we're looking around. It's like, what is all this crap?

And then we went a few months after we looked at everything. It's like, wow, we need everything. Everything is amazing. I'm so glad someone invented something. But yea, more seriously holding your kid for the first time. And the other thing is like, you kind of get a sense of personality that first time you hold your kid and you can draw a through line between the personality you're picking up that first day to how they ended up as they grow up. My first kid was like extremely loud. And she grew up to be like really outspoken. And the second one is a lot calmer.

Just like looking around, just unfazed. And that's how she ended up, you know, at four years old. So it's really interesting.

Adam: That is pretty amazing. I'm trying to think back to my kids. It's probably true. And neither one of my kids slept very much. So, and they don't really now. What are the most surprising things that you've discovered as a dad?

Siqi: How it changes your own perspective of how you grew up.

I remember when my dad came to visit and like, that's when I realized, oh yeah, I didn't remember this, but that's really different. He was holding our second one and he was like, I've never held a child this young before and I'm

like, oh shit, that's right, you haven't. That's crazy. I think like the most surprising thing is how much you reflect on how your childhood is so different and like how it puts things into perspective.

It's probably the most surprising thing. Outside of that, I don't know, like, I don't know that there's like anything that's surprising because we did a bunch of reading and research ahead of the baby, but I think the general thing that we weren't surprised by is. They end up fine. You don't have to worry too much about them.

They're designed to survive. But I think as they grew up, though, as they get older, the thing that surprises me is how quickly they learn everything in particular, like our older one, she got into running so early. And she got so into it. And same with skiing too. Like it's I'm 40 years old and I got into skiing like 10 years ago.

And she was going down a double black or like her, you know, her 20th time down a mountain and took me down my first double black. So they learned so fast. Those are things that you don't expect, right? You go from like one year where they can barely like stand up on her skis. And the next year they're like going down to double blacks and leaving behind, and that’s somewhat motivating and scary.

Adam: Your daughter also has the advantage of having a low center of gravity, 

Siqi: This is true. 

Adam: Which, you know, helps her bomb down That mountain. So yeah, that is an amazing couple of insights there. How quickly they learn. It's kind of fun to watch kids learn. And experience the world and get good at something too.

And I'm glad that the two of you found running as a thing that you can do together as sort of like a side by side activity. So you mentioned that you weren't surprised by that many things because you did a lot of reading. If you could rewind the clock and give your younger self some advice. What would you say to younger Siqi?

Siqi: Every time I think about this, I feel like I don't want to tell him anything.

Adam: Let 'em figure it out.

Siqi: It could have been better, it could have been worse, but it's one of those things where do have this perspective about life where you'll learn just as much from bad experiences, probably more than the good ones. And so like, all of the great advice are in books, and I could like shortcut that advice and give it directly, but there is value in experience and I didn't value experience when I didn't have any experience.

But now that I have it, I realized that that's actually really valuable. But if I could rewind time to one time, it would probably be the first couple of weeks after our first child. And the message, it was like, they'll be fine. And you have to remember that they're not always a potato that eats, shits, and sleeps. At some point they'll very quickly, they'll walk and crawl and talk and be really, really fun and the investment and return curve crosses, and sooner than, because like the first few months for me, I don't know, I think this is not a popular like experience, but I'll just tell like it is like I thought it was, it wasn't great, right?

It's just a lot of work. And I'm like, this is not that interesting. I'm like, I'm not getting the same joy as like looking at a baby as I do looking at my four year old nine year old. And you know, plenty of that saying, oh, it's the most magical thing. It wasn't for me. And maybe I'm weird, 

Adam: You know, I don't think you are. I hear that sentiment a lot from a lot of dads. I think that's a common dad feeling. we can normalize that here on the show.

Siqi: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like, I just wanna, yeah, I feel like it's good to be honest. Like, I just, I feel like, somewhat insecure when it was like, oh, wow, the first time, I'm like, you know, every time I look at my potato, I'm like, Ehhh, okay. You know, maybe there's something broken about me, but I don't care. I'll just, like, tell you exactly how I feel.

But, you know, as they, like, become more expressive, and you can have, like, even a nonverbal conversation with this being, you're like, oh, okay. That's pretty magical. Yeah, this is great.

Adam: Yeah. I love the potato analogy. I often say that young babies all look like Winston Churchill you know, kind of like wrinkly neck, uh, thing.

So yeah, Grum grumpy. Yeah, that's right. if you could go back and I'm sure you got peppered with advice yourself as you were, you know, becoming a father about to become a father. Is there any particular piece of advice that you would go back in time and just like put up the stop sign, tell yourself, like, don't listen to this. This is useless. Set that one out to pasture.

Siqi: Okay, I mean, the biggest change between the first one and second one, and I imagine it's pretty common, is like, you're no longer thinking about them, like, literally dying every hour.

Adam: Yep.

Siqi: Right? Like, I think that's the thing that you hear, but you start to internalize, because you're just paranoid. It's like, what if they stop breathing?

Oh my god, I need to get the wearable, like, you know, ankle bracelet to make sure, you know, you got to get a camera and check on them like every half an hour and that's not how these beings work, you know like they're designed to survive and they'll let you know loudly if you're not doing a good job and they turn out okay, so you don't have to like be constantly, oppressively just paranoid about this.

That's like probably the most mentally draining part of being a first time dad that if I could short circuit with some words, I would try to.

Adam: In an early startup dad episode, I had Darius Contractor on who you probably know or know of, and he talked about like buying some sort of super fancy technology thing for detecting SIDS or whatever in his kid. And he was like. It was the most incredibly useless, like piece of technology.

Like don't buy that. 

Siqi: I think it was a Nanit or…

Adam: Maybe, that sounds right.

Siqi: Yeah. And also, like, when you're in that position, you're like, oh, I could think of all kinds of new startups to build just for this new demographic I'm now a part of. Like a wearable for babies.

Adam: Right. Exactly. Well, because as you know, new parents will buy just about anything that they can. Like, like you mentioned, walking into Bye Bye Baby. What is your favorite book to read to your kids?

Siqi: The book that we just read over and over again it's not my favorite, but I'm sure you know the Blub Blub Fish.

Adam: I don't know if I actually

Siqi: Really? Blub Blub Fish is just a fish who is a really grumpy fish, who goes, blub, blub blubbbbb. And then you meet the octopus. And the octopus says hello, and the blubberfish goes blub, blub, blubbbbb.

Adam: I see where this is going. Cool. I will check out the Blub Blub Fish. 

Siqi: We have like four different copies of it. We have softcover, hardcover, like large format, small format. I don't know how we ended up with so many copies of the same book, but they love it.

Adam: Have you memorized this book? Can you like do it where you're not even looking at the page and your brain is just elsewhere?

Siqi: I cannot. I mean half the book is BLUB BLUB BLUUUUUUUB. And, you know, when you get to that part, like, it gets a laugh no matter how long you're in there every time. So, it's kind of an addictive experience for the kids. 

Adam: That's pretty great. That's a funny thing that you mentioned too. Kids find the things that we do so hilarious, right? Like you are probably like, yeah, blub, blub, fish. I'm over it. But it's every time you do that for your kids, it's like, they're hearing it the first time and they probably just like go bananas.

So, have you developed any particular frameworks or guardrails for parenting?

Siqi: One is language acquisition. So, you know, we are a bilingual household, right? We speak Chinese and English. And for our first kid, I think one of the pieces of advice we got from one of our friends is you should have the mommy language or the daddy language. So one parent should always speak one language. Other parent always speaks the other language. Just kind of did that for our first child. And she's okay in both languages. What really got her better in Chinese is just like having her go to China for a summer. She came back forgetting like a bunch of her English and she was like five or six.

But for our second child, we're actually doing it completely differently. Our second child is four now and she barely speaks any English at all. And up to like last year, she spoke no English at all. The reason we did that is we realized that they're just going to pick up the language of where you live.

Adam: Yeah.

Siqi: So actually the right thing to do is just, like, focus on the other language. And yeah, so her Chinese is really, really good. And it is hilarious because she's like this three year old who lives in America with the strongest, like, Chinese accent when she speaks in English ever. It's hilarious.

Adam: Yeah.

Siqi: So that's one. And the other one is like exercise, obviously. But it's like, I mean, I think it's like one of the greatest hacks if you can get your kids who really love running. And we were lucky enough where she entered like a 5k race last year, Mayday, and she won her age group. And she didn't practice before.

She's like, so she always had a talent for running and that got her to really running. So that helped a lot. And so exercising with your kids is the best, right? It's like such a triple dual use of time.

 And the last one around education, I think the one that was really useful is. There's different philosophies on how you educate children, right? Do you like do Montessori, right? Is it play based? Do you do direct instruction? And the one that I sort of believe in is like, you want to transition. You want to like focus on force feeding them and direct instruction up until the point they can bootstrap. So basically we put them into a very academically focused school up until the second grade where they were just like doing phonics and learning how to read.

And then afterwards we put them into like a more laissez faire school. And once they are able to read and you have like a bunch of books available to them and their curiosity takes over then you're good to go. But getting them to reading as early as possible was our strategy.

Adam: I love that. Yeah it's interesting, and I've thought a lot about this for even since before I had kids, but like, everything is a reading exercise, right? math, you have to be able to read the story problem to do the work. It's social studies, like anything you want to learn, like reading is kind of the gateway that that unlocks that.

Siqi: Yeah. And once you know how to read and you read something interesting, you want to read more, right? So it's a positive feedback loop. That was like the thing that we focused on early and that's worked out.

Adam: Yeah. So, you mentioned that how you taught your daughter's language has changed between the two of them. You mentioned just sort of your worry About whether your kid is going to die or your paranoia level has gone way down with your second second kid, Any other like large evolutions that you've noticed from your oldest daughter to your youngest and how you personally have responded.

And then as a follow up to that, I'm curious if you've also noticed anything change in how you run a company or manage as, I guess you've matured as you've had a family, like, et cetera. What's changed?

Siqi: With the kids I mean the other thing between the two kids is you just buy a lot less crap you know, there is like that funny meme where like the first child has like all of the wearables and the crib and everything and the second child has like a mattress in an empty room.

Adam: A box. Like a cardboard box.

Siqi: It's not far from the truth. But also is like well, you know, we already have a bunch of stuff outside of that, yeah, we're just a lot less stressed.

I will say the five year age gap is really interesting.

We waited a long time. We weren't sure if we wanted a second. And then we decided, okay, we're going to pull the trigger on it. And the age gap is right enough where like, she has a best big sister ever. You know, Alessandra is super helpful with Mira and everything that she gets, she's like, oh, does my little sister want it first? It's incredible. So that's a really big change. And also that actually is really interesting in that the first one tends to be a lot more giving and the second one is frankly like a lot more self centered because of that. A lot more swallowed by her sister. And so yeah, for the first one, you know, we have to like, tell them to adjust different ways.

Like, hey, you don't have to share everything if you don't want to.

Adam: Mm-Hmm.

Siqi: And the second one is like, you probably should share things that you don't want to, because you don't want to share anything. So, the dynamics of having an older sister and the younger sister is pretty interesting and as far as how effects work I will say this Runway has, I think most people at runway have kids.

Adam: Mm.

Siqi: It affects, I don't know, unconsciously, I don't think I was discriminating against people with kids, but when you're young, you hire young people.

Adam: Yeah.

Siqi: And here we hire adults, and we trust them to be adults. So that's pretty different.

Adam: I like that idea of you're hiring adults, you kind of hire people a little bit in your own mirror image, even if it's not you know, again, like you mentioned, it's not sort of biased or anything, but you do want to hire, you know, more senior folks when you're more senior yourself.

So, makes a ton of sense. Do you think that part of the reason that your daughters get along so well, or have this dynamic because of the age gap is that there may be less competitive or something like that because they're farther apart in age, they don't have a lot of overlap and things like that.

Siqi: For sure. That contributes. But also it helps that the older one really appreciates having a little sister because she's been asking for a sibling for years.

Adam: Yeah.

Siqi: Right. And so she was really, really happy about it.

Adam: Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. All right, I wanted to transition and ask you a little bit about partnership with your wife. So as we all know, very important, partnership, when you have kids. It is also very hard to agree with your partner 100 percent of the time. So I'm very curious to hear what is something that you and your wife do not agree on when it comes to parenting.

Siqi: I think we would all settle for 50 percent of the time.

Adam: Probably! I would settle for that on several days. Yes. 

Siqi: Probably the biggest thing that we don't agree on is like, how much do we let her make her own decisions? And to what degree are we laissez faire about what she does and what she spends her time on? How much do we just tell her? You got to do this. And I would say whatever is the opposite of a tiger mom is, that is me.

Adam: Okay.

Siqi: And my wife is a tiger mom,

Adam: Okay.

Siqi: Like classically in the book. Right. And the combination of it is basically our philosophy. If you add it to is like, our kids better at least drop out of Stanford. But yeah, I think that is a pretty big sort of disagreement. And just education in general, like, the value of college. I'm like, college is a waste of time. There's a Teal fellowship where Peter Teal is paying people to not even go to college. And she's very much like, but no, they're going to like meet people and they're going to be credentialed and all these things.

I'm like, who knows if Stanford is even going to exist 10 years from now? We don't know, you know? And so like, if there's this disagreement about like sort of the longterm future of education and AGI but you have to prepare for that now that can like become pretty tense.

Adam: Yeah. And it's fascinating because like, you know, we can't predict the future. And this is going to be a really interesting segue into my next topic. But The educational system that we have today has been around for like a hundred years in the United States and hasn't actually changed very much in that time.

You know, aside from like industrial revolution and things like that, it is still grow up, you know, do well in school, get into a good college, prepares you for a job, get a great job, live your life, lather, rinse, repeat for the next generation and try and make sure that the next generation is better off than you were and gets access to more opportunities.

But you know, who knows what the hell is going to happen with AI right? Like we're already incorporating it into educational opportunities and things for our kids. And so I'm curious to get your take on this as someone who has built their entire career in technology, you know, you also worked in virtual reality, gaming, which I often find is on sort of the cutting edge of technology advancements.

What's the relationship that you want your kids to have with technology as they get older and how are you leveraging technology today with them?

Siqi: Ideally I want them to think about technology the same way I think about them, but whether they end up thinking about the same way as you do or the complete opposite, who knows? But the way I think about technology in a way, encourage our kids to think with technology is these are tools that give you leverage.

You can draw a line between ChatGPT and a stick, like. We, as humans, we build tools and tools help us do more things at greater scale, greater impact. And that's the way you should think about technology. And the way we've used it, I think obviously AI is a big thing. And so it was a really important to me that I introduced them chatGPT really early. They have the chatGPT app on their iPads.

I encouraged them to use it for everything. I gave them perplexity as well search for everything, just ask the questions. Yeah, these are tools to be used, to be mastered.

Adam: Do you talk to your kids at all about the potential pitfalls of over reliance on AI, at least in today's version, things like hallucinations or incorrect information or anything like that? Have you had a conversation, maybe not with your four year old, but maybe with your nine year old around like, how do you make sure that you're getting the right stuff out of this?

Siqi: I think actually like that's less important. I don't spend a whole lot of time talking to them about that. I mean, I, we did have a conversation. Hey, not everything's going to be correct, but that's okay. It'll be more correct with QT5. Like that's just a very temporary thing, but like it's the same conversation that you would have, like, don't believe everything you read on the internet or in the news for that matter.

Right. It's like, you use your own judgment, but this is a really useful tool. That gives you like a perspective, just like a newspaper or the internet. And like, not all of that is true either. So you have to be judicious in your judgment about it, but it's highly convenient.

Adam: What's the sort of most interesting thing that one of your kids has done with chat GPT? 

Siqi: Okay. So, over Christmas we were with a family friend and they wanted to make a game. And they were inventing what kind of game they want to make. And we were in Japan at the time with this family and we've seen Gundam. And so Alessandra and this child they wanted to figure out, okay, what kind of game do we want to make?

They asked ChatGPT for like ideas for games. They knew the theme of the game and the theme of the game is a cross between Transformers and Gundam. And they use ChatGPT to create a bunch of like art that is like, crossing to Transformers and Gundam. And like, I would never have thought to like cross it too, but there is like some amazingly cool robot illustrators come out of it.

They were like talking through the rules writing down what the rules are. And then. They were trying to figure out, okay, how do we like code this? And then they asked how do you teach them how to use Unity? Soa 9 year old and a 10 year old, I think. They downloaded Unity I helped them download Unity.

They downloaded it. They were telling me how do you think, okay, now what do we do? And they're working on this game.

Adam: That is amazing. At nine and 10. How old were you when you built your first game?

Siqi: Like in code, I was in the sixth grade is like when I built my first game, I built like a version of Minesweeper, Blackjack and Monopoly and Visual Basic in the sixth grade. So yeah, that is substantially younger. But I saw also that was when I had my first computer.

Adam: Yeah.

Siqi: So yeah, they're in the they were in the fourth grade.

Adam: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So you were probably two ish, two, three years older than them. Fascinating. And I'll bet your illustrations for Minesweeper were not nearly as good as what your daughter was coming up with.

Siqi: My older also some background in this right. So in the I think it was a late second grade or around third grade. I mean, she was like on Scratch. And that's a really great, it's like, you know, Roblox, right, in 2D, right? So she was like, coding for mystery games and that was a pretty good introduction.

Adam: I may have mentioned this in the chat group that we're in together. I can't recall, but my son built a game in Scratch where you catch donuts in a hat and that was the highlight of back to school night or the school open house. He had to show me this game that he made and he was just like gleefully clacking away and showing me the code next to it and stuff. Very cool.

Adam: What is something that you have had to give up to become a dad?

Siqi: Alone time.

Adam: Okay. Was that something that you prioritized a lot before?

Siqi: Um, it was the default before, right? I'm an INTP Myers Briggs type. So it's like the most introverted one that you can have. And alone time lets you be a lot more curious. You can just like spend a lot more time being hyper focused on coding. And as a dad, like, it's just hard to get deep into any one thing anymore.

And that's something that you have to like, really schedule time on. But like, if you're scheduling it, it's hard to like, pull on a thread in the moment when you're curious about a thing. So that's like, probably the biggest and toughest change of being a dad.

Adam: What do you do in that situation when, you know, creativity or inspiration strikes and you're like, I really need to dig into this thing right now, or I'm going to lose it, I mean, do you have some sort of signal you tell your kids or do you, you like, hey, everybody, the door's closing. I'm going into my place.

Siqi: You write it down and then, you know, with some experience of writing it down, you realize that you can write it down and still forget the thing. So then you write it down and then you try to record a video of you, 

like, So I use a Loom sometimes as a note. But generally like apps, there's some like controversy on the, interwebs about like the value of a Notion or a Rome today and how's the base of time, but my sense of the, it's probably like a lot more useful when you're a parent and you just have to like write things down all the time, otherwise you lose it.

Adam: Yes. I found that audio notes are far better now than even typing because it's so much faster for me to just boop and like record a thing and then come back to it. So.

Siqi: There's an app that I invested in. I think it's called Talktastic now. And what it'll do is like, you just. you know, vomit audio thoughts and I'll try to like translate it into like really well formed

Adam: Oh,

Siqi: pieces of text.

Adam: Nice. Talktastic. I will check that out. We'll link to it in the show notes for other people who are struggling as parents to form thoughts. What are some ways that you restore your batteries or center yourself As a dad, you mentioned exercise. and running is there another thing that's like pretty important to you that kind of gets you recharged?

Siqi: Traveling to places where there is a kids center.

Adam: We were talking about this before, before we started recording a critical error when you travel somewhere and there is no kid's corner or kid's zone.

Siqi: Yeah. Traveling with child care taken care of is probably the most rejuvenating thing, I think.

Adam: I love that. Aside from not having childcare taken care of when you travel, what is a mistake that you've made as a father?

Siqi: Biggest mistake is just feeling entitled to my spouse's time, the one I mentioned before. That is like, you know, you don't, you think you're doing it for the right reasons. Like, well, I'm just prioritizing these things. But what it really is, is it comes from this position of entitlement.

That, oh, okay, well, you have your role, I have my role. So, therefore, I don't have to do certain things. Like pick up my clothes. Right? And the reality is like, these small things, although small, are small in individual pieces, they add up to feelings. And that's probably the biggest mistake is like, instead of like, feeling like, oh, there is this split and I resent not having to like, do things else on my split.

It's about giving. You have to actively give in order for this to be healthy and like doing things outside of the things that you're supposed to do is how you like show that giving. Not just the things that you're supposed to do or you think is part of your role as a startup founder or as a breadwinner.

And that took me like way too long for me to really internalize.

Adam: Yeah. How did you finally get to that place? Was it a little bit with the help and loving support of your partner? Or were you able to kind of figure that out on your own?

Siqi: We were smart enough to talk to a therapist together before things got like bad.

And, you know, it was to a point where in the first few sessions the therapist was like, why, I don't know why you're seeing us, but then we got deeper. It's like, okay, well, here's like a thing. And the thing that she said. It's just so dumb but it just works.

It's like, hey, you should just like lean into it and like, feel good about it. And you'll just feel good about it. And like, it just, it doesn't sound like it should work, but like, just after the conversations, that thing that she said, I'm like, okay. And every time does it come up? I think about, I was like, I'm just going to like, feel good about it and lean into it.

And I was like, Oh shit, that totally works. And the more I lean to it, the better I feel about it. It wasn't the opposite.

Adam: Turns out she knew a thing or two about this.

Siqi: Yeah. She is very good at it.

Adam: Amazing. Well, my last question before we start our rapid fire around is how can people follow along with your journey or be helpful to you, your company, If they'd like to find you on the internet,

Siqi: Well, if you have finance problems, I feel bad for you, son. But, go to runway.com or email me or tweet at me up later. And I'll be happy to help.

Adam: Cool runway.com, we will put that in the show notes. And you, I think I saw relatively recently within the last year, raised some financing, some decently significant financing. So that's very exciting. So congrats on that. And I know as many would say it's just the beginning, but it does sound like, things are going pretty well at Runway and you're getting some traction and growing.

So I'm excited to check it out. Are you ready for rapid fire?

Siqi: Oh, let's go.

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

Siqi: A ball pit.

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

Siqi: Running or skiing

Adam: What is your go to dad wardrobe?

Siqi: I'm kind of wearing it just for this podcast.

Adam: What is it? I can't even see what it says on the shirt?

Siqi: The coolest dad. In mirror image, the whole family has like matching sets here.

Adam: That's amazing. That in and of itself is like a very dad move right there. How many parenting books do you have in your house?

Siqi: I want to say probably upwards of a dozen.

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

Siqi: Exactly zero.

Adam: Okay, good. Common answer. What are the favorite ages for your kids?

Siqi: The current age where current age is greater than two.

Adam: Ok. What is your least favorite age?

Siqi: 1.5 or less.

Adam: 1.5 or less. I love that. We're giving it in terms of formulas. Allows for some imprecision. Have you ever secretly thrown away a piece of your kid's artwork?

Siqi: Yes. And I have not secretly thrown away

Adam: It's important for kids to experience disappointment. Yeah. What is your favorite kids movie?

Siqi: The Amazing Panda Adventure because my wife is in it.

Adam: Nice, now I'm going to have to check this out. What is the worst experience that you have ever had assembling a children's toy or a piece of furniture?

Siqi: Don't know if I had a, like really bad experiences, but most recently I had to put together a chicken coop because the kids wanted chickens. And the chickens came home from school because they were hatching eggs. And that was, now it took a while.

Adam: Okay. Are you now the proud owner of couple of chickens?

Siqi: 4 chickens. Yeah. Actually we have four and then three, and then two, and then one. And now we have four again.

Adam: Okay, you restocked the coop.

Yeah. One thing I've, I also at one point in my life own chickens, my adult life. And one thing I learned is that chickens are fairly fragile animals. They die very easily. 

Siqi: Yeah. I think not naturally, but by predators. Yes. Which is how we lost our chickens.

Adam: Oh, I'm sorry

Siqi: But the other thing I learned is that eggs come out of the hens without the need for a rooster.

Adam: Correct.

Siqi: That blew my mind.

Adam: Yeah. Do you eat a lot of eggs in your household?

Siqi: We do eat a lot of eggs.

Adam: I bet you kind of have to. Have you ever accidentally mixed up your kids' names?

Siqi: Many times, yes.

Adam: How long can a piece of food sit on the floor in your household and you will still eat it?

Siqi: I, we generally respect the five second rule.

Adam: Five second rule. Okay. What nostalgic movie can you not wait to force your kids to watch?

Siqi: This movie, I actually did not wait till force my kid to watch, because I took my older one to the symphony when there was a live showing, and it was completely inappropriate, but I think she was six, and we watched The Matrix.

Adam: You, you took her to see the Symphony Matrix performance. Love that.

Siqi: She was definitely the youngest person there.

Adam: Yeah. Did you get any weird looks from other people as the bullets are whizzing by Neo's head?

Siqi: I didn't look.

Adam: You didn't look. Nope. How often do you tell your kids back in my day stories?

Siqi: probably once a month?

Adam: Yeah. You ever tell your oldest daughter, by your age, I had lived in China two different times.

Siqi: No, no, that's it's not an attraction. It's not something that I aspire her to also do.

Adam: That’s a bug, not a feature. And finally, my favorite question. And I know you only have two kids, but you do live down in the peninsula. So, what is your take on minivans?

Siqi: One of the greatest adventures of mankind.

Adam: The minivan is one of the greatest inventions of mankind.

I, wow, you heard it here first folks, Siqi is a huge minivan fan. All right. Not pulling any punches on that one. 

Siqi: It's the Bye Bye Baby of cars.

Adam: It's the Bye Bye Baby of cars. That is a wonderful note to end on. that will live in my head, rent free forever. Based on this show, Siqi, thank you so much for joining me on Startup Dad today.

This was an awesome conversation and I wish you and Runway and your family, all the success in the world. Thanks again. I appreciate it.

Siqi: Thanks for having me. I think the pod that you're doing is wonderful. Happy to be on it.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Siqi Chen. 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 Herron.

You can join my community of over 10,000 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.