Startup Dad

Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan is a Professor of Psychology at The Ohio State University and Director of the Children and Parents Lab. For nearly two decades, she has studied how couples become parents, how fathers develop confidence, and the subtle dynamics that can push one parent into the role of expert while the other becomes the backup.
She’s also the lead researcher behind the New Parents Project, a longitudinal study that began with nearly 200 first-time parents during pregnancy and has followed their families into their children’s late teens. We talked about maternal gatekeeping, why even couples who want an equal partnership can fall into unequal roles, and what dads can do to become more confident and involved parents. We discussed:
Understanding maternal gatekeeping: How parents can either close or open the gate, and why the dynamic is more complicated than moms simply shutting dads out.
Breaking the expert and backup parent cycle: How one confident parent and one less confident parent can create a self-reinforcing imbalance at home.
Building confidence as a dad: What Sarah learned from expectant parents using a faceless doll and why dads can grow into the role with practice.
Why parenting gets less equal after kids: What time diary research revealed about childcare, housework, paid work, and leisure after becoming parents.
Making parental leave work for dads: Why paid leave, workplace culture, and senior leaders modeling leave all matter.
Getting out of the backup parent role: Why dads need to communicate, take ownership, and make their desire to be involved clear.

Where to find Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjschoppesullivan/ 
X: https://x.com/schoppesullivan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahjayneus/ 

Where to find Adam Fishman
FishmanAF Newsletter: www.FishmanAFNewsletter.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjfishman/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startupdadpod/ 
X: https://x.com/fishmanaf

In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Welcoming Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, Professor at The Ohio State University
(02:54) What a faceless doll revealed about expecting parents
(06:03) Why intuitive parenting looks different for dads
(07:35) What predicts how involved dads become
(14:18) The two sides of maternal gatekeeping
(22:32) What actually predicts gateclosing
(27:06) What 18 studies reveal about maternal gatekeeping
(32:20) Why dads are half of the gatekeeping equation
(37:07) How masculinity shapes father involvement
(40:51) What time diaries reveal about the parenting workload
(46:52) Why weekends make the parenting gap even bigger
(51:30) How parental leave can set dads up for involvement
(55:30) How jealousy can shape the co-parenting relationship
(01:15:04) How new dads can get out of the backup parent role
(01:18:54) Lightning round: spelling bees, cat names, and station wagons

Resources From This Episode:

The Ohio State University: https://www.osu.edu/ 
New Parents Project: https://u.osu.edu/schoppesullivan/new-parents-project/ 
Allison Daminger’s Startup Dad episode: https://youtu.be/Bm0OVELl_yU 
American Time Use Survey: https://www.bls.gov/tus/ 
Darby Saxbe’s Research: https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/33/7/4156/6691667 
Richard Pett’s Research: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12476 
Co-Parents Behaving Badly: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42441646/ 
Atari 2600 (Gaming Console): https://atari.com/collections/atari-2600-plus 
The Sound of Music (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059742/ 
The Wizard of Oz (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/ 

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Peter Yang is the creator of Behind the Craft, a 100k+ subscriber YouTube channel and 150k+ subscriber newsletter focused on product, AI, and building. Previously a product leader at Roblox, Peter spent years climbing the traditional career ladder before walking away from a seven figure tech career to bet on himself and build his creator business full-time. And he did it all so he could spend time on what mattered most… his family.
He’s the dad of two daughters, ages eight and four, and his wife is an engineer at Microsoft. They’re figuring out how to raise curious, resilient kids while navigating careers, technology, and a rapidly changing, AI-fueled world. We discussed:
Walking away from a seven figure tech career: Why Peter left Roblox to bet on himself, and how trying to juggle a demanding job with his creator business was hurting both.
Being more present with his daughters: How walking his eight-year-old to school and putting his phone away helped Peter create more focused, meaningful time with his kids.
Breaking out of the traditional career script: How Peter’s immigrant upbringing, Ivy League path, and years in consulting, banking, and tech shaped a definition of success he eventually started to question.
Teaching kids to build with AI: How Peter’s eight-year-old used Codex and voice commands to build her own game from scratch, and what that taught him about creativity, communication, and the future of learning.
Raising kids with agency and resilience: Why Peter wants his daughters to learn how to build, sell, fail, communicate clearly, and pursue the things they genuinely enjoy.
Remembering that family matters more than the career ladder: Why Peter is spending more time with his aging parents, preserving their stories for his daughters, and rethinking what kind of legacy actually matters.

Where to find Peter Yang
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petergyang/ 
X: https://x.com/petergyang
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeterYangYT

Where to find Adam Fishman

FishmanAF Newsletter: www.FishmanAFNewsletter.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjfishman/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startupdadpod/ 
X: https://x.com/fishmanaf

In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Welcoming Peter Yang, creator of Behind The Craft
(02:58) Why Peter walked away from Roblox
(04:13) What Peter learned from walking his daughter to school
(09:53) Breaking free from the Ivy League success script
(11:46) Overcoming a scarcity mindset and redefining security
(14:37) Peter’s principles for betting on yourself
(17:49) How product management theater pushed Peter to make a change
(22:16) Teaching his daughter to build with Codex
(27:00) How AI is changing the way kids learn
(34:10) Helping your kids find their zone of genius
(37:10) Preparing kids for a world without a traditional career ladder
(38:56) Creating vs. consuming and Peter’s rules for screen time
(47:28) Why Peter only publishes things he’d want his kids to see
(48:43) Raising kids while your parents are getting older
(56:59) Lightning round and Peter’s parenting hacks

Resources From This Episode:
Behind The Craft: https://www.behindthecraft.com/ 
Behind The Craft (Substack): https://creatoreconomy.so/ 
Behind The Craft (Youtube): https://www.youtube.com/@PeterYangYT
Peter Yang on Github: https://github.com/petergyang 
No AI Slop (Github): https://github.com/petergyang/no-ai-slop 
Human Review (Github): https://github.com/petergyang/human-review 
Roblox (Video Game): https://www.roblox.com/ 
Being Mortal (Book by Atul Gawande): https://atulgawande.com/book/being-mortal/ 
Wait But Why’s The Tail End (Article): https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html
Open AI Codex: https://openai.com/codex/ 
ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/ 
Claude: https://claude.ai/
Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-code 
Granola: https://www.granola.ai/ 
Linear: https://linear.app/ 
Blend: https://blend.com/ 
Magna-Tiles (Toy): https://www.magnatiles.com/ 
Lululemon (Apparel): https://shop.lululemon.com/ 
Ten Thousand (Apparel): https://www.tenthousand.cc/ 
StarCraft (Video Game): https://starcraft.blizzard.com/ 
Harry Potter (Book Series): https://www.goodreads.com/series/45175-harry-potter 
The Iron Giant (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129167/ 
Toy Story 3 (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435761/ 
Kiki’s Delivery Service (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097814/ 
My Neighbor Totoro (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096283/ 
Rocky (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075148/ 
Toyota Highlander (Car): https://www.toyota.com/highlander/ 

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Aakash Gupta is a creator, product advisor, author, and the host of one of the most popular newsletters, podcasts, and social accounts for product managers and AI builders. He built a following of over 350,000 people on LinkedIn through six years of daily posting and now uses AI to create leverage across his work and family life.
He’s also a dad of two who stepped away from a VP of Product role to build a career with more flexibility and be more present with his kids. Aakash joins Startup Dad to share how he built a Parent OS using Claude Code, AI agents, and automations to manage the invisible workload of parenting. We discussed:
Building a Parent OS with AI: How Aakash created a personal operating system that combines context libraries, AI skills, and automations to manage family logistics, reminders, and everyday parenting tasks.
Using AI to become a more present parent: Why Aakash believes AI’s biggest benefit is not more screen time, but reducing the amount of time parents spend on their phones handling tasks in front of their kids.
Creating personalized AI storytelling: How Aakash built a storytelling system that remembers his kids’ preferences, previous stories, and family values to create better experiences for his children.
Automating the invisible work of family life: How AI helps manage school applications, activity registrations, subscriptions, travel planning, and reminders that usually fall on parents to track manually.
Turning AI into a family coordination system: How Aakash uses AI as a shared operating layer between him and his wife to keep everyone aligned without constant communication.
Why parents should start building with AI now: Why Aakash believes every parent should learn how to use AI effectively, not just for productivity, but to prepare their families for a future where AI becomes part of everyday life.

Aakash’s Open Source Parent OS
https://github.com/aakashg/parenting-os

Where to find Aakash Gupta
Website: https://www.aakashg.com/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagupta/ 
Newsletter: https://www.news.aakashg.com/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@growproduct

Where to find Adam Fishman
FishmanAF Newsletter: www.FishmanAFNewsletter.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjfishman/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startupdadpod/ 
X: https://x.com/fishmanaf

In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Welcoming Aakash Gupta, author and podcast host
(04:55) Why Claude is the most powerful software ever built
(07:11) Why AI is underused by families
(10:42) Being a father first, creator second
(12:29) Leaving a VP of Product role for his family
(15:16) Advice for dads considering the creator path
(17:44) Calendar non-negotiables and daily time blocking
(21:51) Building AI-powered storytelling for his kids
(26:22) Inside the Parent OS: a live demo
(37:48) The automations his family uses most
(43:39) Where AI automation fell short
(46:39) How to build your own Parent OS from scratch
(52:37) How AI scored a free museum day in Poland
(1:01:19) Advice for builders about to become parents

Resources From This Episode:

Parent OS: https://github.com/aakashg/parenting-os
Product Growth: https://www.news.aakashg.com/ 
The Growth Podcast: https://www.news.aakashg.com/s/product-growth-podcast 
Claude: https://claude.ai/
Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/
Cursor: https://cursor.com/
Whisper Flow: https://whisperflow.ai/
MCP (Model Context Protocol): https://modelcontextprotocol.io/
GitHub: https://github.com/
Notion: https://www.notion.com/
Slack: https://slack.com/
Canva: https://www.canva.com/
Figma: https://www.figma.com/
Typefully: https://typefully.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/
Claude Opus: https://claude.ai/
ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/
OpenAI: https://openai.com/
Codex: https://openai.com/codex/
Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/
Whoop: https://www.whoop.com/
Google Flights: https://www.google.com/travel/flights
Air Zoo: https://www.airzoo.org/
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library: https://imaginationlibrary.com/
Alien (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/
Inside Out (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2096673/ 
Kia Telluride (Car): https://www.kia.com/us/en/telluride
Hyundai Palisade (Car): https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/palisade

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For sponsorship inquiries, email: podcast@fishmana.com
For Startup Dad Merch: www.startupdadshop.com

Ankit Gupta is the Founder of Bicycle Health, a company he built and led for nearly nine years before handing over the CEO role and becoming a stay-at-home dad. Before Bicycle, Ankit co-founded Pulse while at Stanford, a news app that caught the attention of Steve Jobs, was famously pulled from the App Store later that same day, and was eventually acquired by LinkedIn.
He’s also a dad of one, with a two-year-old son, and the husband of a transplant nephrologist in the middle of a demanding fellowship. After years of being pulled toward building companies, Ankit found that pull shifting toward his family. He joins Startup Dad to talk about the 18-month process of stepping away from Bicycle, the turbulence and FOMO that came with trading founder life for full-time parenting, and why he believes some of the best things parents can give their kids are simply time, love, and room to be bored. We discussed:
Choosing fatherhood over founder life: How Ankit spent 18 months deciding to step away from Bicycle Health and follow a new pull toward being more present with his son.
The transition from CEO to stay-at-home dad: Why leaving startup life created unexpected challenges, from losing daily feedback loops to adjusting to a completely different pace.
Why time and love matter most: How Ankit believes parents can get caught optimizing everything, when simply being present is what matters most.
Rethinking modern parenting pressure: Why Ankit pushes back on overscheduling kids and the constant pursuit of efficiency, and what boredom can teach children.
Using AI to understand parenting: How Ankit used Claude and ChatGPT to research parenting philosophies, map different approaches, and build his own framework.
Building with AI for yourself: How a personal parenting experiment became a public tool and showed what is now possible with AI-powered creation.

Where to find Ankit Gupta
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankitgupta00/ 
X: https://x.com/gankit

Where to find Adam Fishman
FishmanAF Newsletter: www.FishmanAFNewsletter.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjfishman/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startupdadpod/ 
X: https://x.com/fishmanaf

In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Welcoming Ankit Gupta, founder of Bicycle Health
(02:50) The untold story behind stepping back from Bicycle Health
(05:14) Becoming a full-time dad so his wife could focus on her fellowship
(09:38) Preschool shuts down and Ankit becomes a solo dad
(12:29) The "dopamine desert" of trading founder life for fatherhood
(14:15) Why "time and love" is a contrarian parenting philosophy
(17:49) Comparing overscheduled American childhoods to growing up in India
(21:31) Addressing privilege and financial independence
(26:55) Why parenting is tiring
(32:02) Using Claude to map every parenting philosophy
(42:54) Redesigning the home and moving the bed to the floor
(46:17) Going screen-free and Montessori-inspired play
(52:15) The Steve Jobs Pulse story: best and worst day
(1:04:11) Why entrepreneurship pairs well with parenting

Resources From This Episode:

Bicycle Health: https://www.bicyclehealth.com/
Pulse: https://www.linkedin.com/ (acquired by LinkedIn)
Fellow Parent: https://fellowparent.org/
Good Inside by Dr. Becky: https://www.goodinside.com/
Claude: https://claude.ai/
ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/
Montessori Education: https://amshq.org/
Nanit Camera: https://www.nanit.com/
Inside Out (Film): https://www.pixar.com/inside-out
The Lion King (Film): https://www.disney.com/movies/the-lion-king
Pikler Triangle: https://www.piklertriangle.com/
Costco Car Seats: https://www.costco.com/car-seats-boosters.html 

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Support Startup Dad

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For Startup Dad Merch: www.startupdadshop.com

Brad Harrington is the former Executive Director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family and spent nearly two decades at Hewlett-Packard, earning his PhD along the way.

He walked away from corporate America and took a  75% pay cut to become one of the leading researchers on fatherhood, caregiving, and work-family integration. Now retired, Brad is a happily married dad of three who has spent the last quarter-century studying why men struggle to escape work-family conflict. We discussed:
The 3 Archetypes of Modern Fatherhood: Breaking down traditional, egalitarian, and conflicted fathers - and why the "conflicted" bucket is consistently the largest group.
The Caregiving Gap: Why 70% of fathers report wanting a 50/50 caregiving split, yet only 35% actually live it.
The Financial & Organizational Traps: The economic pressures and workplace cultures that keep men locked into primary breadwinner roles even when they want out.
The Power of Early Paternity Leave: Why taking dedicated time off in the first few weeks of a child's life sets the trajectory for a dad's hands-on caregiving identity for decades.
The Dual-Career Lifecycle: How couples navigate moving through stages from allies and acrobats to adversaries and accommodators.
The Danger of Over-Scheduling Kids: Why competitive youth sports and hyper-structured childhoods are stripping kids of independence and unstructured play.
Why Parenting Never Ends: Lessons from raising three adult children through career shifts, health struggles, and navigating relationship dynamics across decades.

Where to find Brad Harrington
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradharrington/ 

Where to find Adam Fishman
FishmanAF Newsletter: www.FishmanAFNewsletter.com 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjfishman/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startupdadpod/ 
X: https://x.com/fishmanaf

In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Welcoming Brad Harrington, former Executive Director of the Boston College Center for Work and Family
(02:26) Commuting 3,000 miles every other week while balancing family
(06:00) Walking away from corporate America and taking a 75% pay cut
(08:16) From personal conflict to a quarter-century of research
(10:41) The three archetypes of fatherhood: traditional, egalitarian, and conflicted
(16:16) Why conflicted fathers are the least satisfied men at work and home
(24:32) Don't argue about who does more—focus on who does what
(28:15) The mental load and the mindset of a partner versus an employee
(32:26) Four reasons men stay locked in the breadwinner role
(36:30) Paternity leave and the "train leaving the station" in those first few months
(43:32) The four stages of couples: allies, acrobats, adversaries, and accommodators
(48:19) Advice for startup founders on building parental leave policies
(52:07) The stay-at-home dad study and societal double standards
(57:52) The overscheduled child and the loss of unstructured play
(1:04:36) Parenting never ends: navigating adulthood, health struggles, and advice
(1:11:56) Lightning round: Minivans, pre-iPad travel, family chat, and dishwasher loading

Resources From This Episode:
Brad Harrington’s Profile at Boston College: https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/offices/office-of-university-communications/for-the-media/z_archive/brad-harrington.html 
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise: https://www.hpe.com/
Dr. Linda Haas: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Linda-Haas 
The Wizard of Oz (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/
The Sound of Music (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059742/

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Support Startup Dad
For sponsorship inquiries, email: podcast@fishmana.com
For Startup Dad Merch: www.startupdadshop.com