13 thoughts on the intersection of tech and fatherhood

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My father started his first company in 1979 on our kitchen table. That was called the Angus Reid group. He grew that to be the largest market research company in Canada, sort of known as Canada's pollster. He was always very into innovation and research. He was the first guy to do some pretty interesting things with telephone research and global research.

One of my greatest achievements to date is raising two wonderful humans. Many people said that I can’t be a startup founder and a good father. I can say respectfully that they were wrong. My kids are the most supportive of the journey. Since day zero, I explained what I was doing and why.

I founded TTT Studios because of my kids. Before TTT, my family and I spent six months of the year travelling the world. The amazing Mrs. Hobbs works as a tour guide, so more often than not she was off and occupied in the summer months and I was the full-time parent (a job I love). When my daughter started kindergarten we needed a permanent base of living, and I needed some flexibility in my schedule so as not to disrupt my dad duties. Thus, one of the first rules that my wonderful co-founders Josephine Wong, David Hobbs, and I came up with is that our company culture would be family-first.

I didn't want to have a kid until I was in a place financially where I could always be there for the recital, game, or moment. Yet I wasn't when I left my career as a head of technology for growth startups. [With] my kid on the way, a bigger mortgage, and no job, I decided to make the most sensible move: become an entrepreneur. I'm a sucker for punishment I guess. That's cash anxiety wrapped in a nice box with a bow on it. I decided to start a business that had its own cash flow needs and mouths to feed. Since then, I've become a dad twice over. I believe I'm doing an okay job with them, and I believe deeply in the work we do at GetFresh Ventures, and our numbers show for it.

As a parent, I try to encourage traits like curiosity and persistence. But something I realized is that it’s not so much that kids don’t innately have these traits or understand these lessons, it’s that we end up losing them as we grow up. It’s funny how sometimes we learn more from our kids than they do from us.

My wife and I celebrated the birth of our daughter, Hannah, in March 2021. From the moment we started shopping in the baby category, we were struck by how expensive and rather basic everything felt. We bought the essentials, and then after just a few uses, it became abundantly clear to us that things needed to be better.

It’s a lot easier to do the entrepreneurial grind when you don’t have kids. When you have kids and they get to a certain age, you want to be home more. The silver lining of the pandemic was I got to spend every day with my kid.

I was preparing myself for the future after hockey, and I ended up getting a job offer after that internship. So, I told my team a week before. I very much wanted to play, but at the same time, had a young family. My daughter was just born that same spring and working at Pender hit everything I was looking for. It was an opportunity I couldn't pass up and I don’t have any regrets.

As a parent, you’re always looking for ways to streamline your life and products that help you minimize the hassle and maximize quality time with your family.

I have a little girl – she's three years old. So my day starts at any time between 2:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. — whenever she wants to climb into bed. It's actually brilliant. After some nice snuggles, I tend to get up, make breakfast, and then get ready for work.

Being a dad is without question the best job I’ve ever had. Thank you to everyone in my professional network who has supported this amazing journey. We’re doing great.

‘As a father and the founder of a tech company for kids, I always felt that platforms built on social validation, comparison, and FOMO weren’t appropriate for younger users,’ he wrote of the shelved Instagram Kids platform.

It's been incredible. Everyone says that, but it’s true. Sometimes I tear up when my little boy has to go to sleep because I’m going to miss him. I’m back to work full-time. So the five minutes between meetings that I get with my son literally makes me well up. And it happens like five times a day, and I have to ask myself, ‘Who is this guy … crying all the time?’ Being a dad is amazing, but it’s a big change.