Startup Dad

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

Adam Grenier is the Founder of AI Matey, a growth and product advisor, longtime startup operator, and the creator of DadBench, an AI evaluation system built around one deceptively difficult challenge, teaching a model to write a good dad joke.

He’s also a dad of three and one of the very first guests to appear on Startup Dad (#2 in fact!). Three years later, Adam is back to talk about what has changed in his family and how getting laid off from Eventbrite sent him deep into AI experimentation, model training, and reinforcement learning. We discussed:
Advocating for neurodivergent kids at school: How Adam navigated two very different advocacy journeys, fighting for more support for his daughter with ADHD while deciding whether his autistic son was ready for less.
Learning AI by actually building with it: Why Adam believes hands-on experimentation with new models and research can teach you things that traditional coursework might take years to reach.
Training AI to tell dad jokes: How a funny side project became a crash course in reinforcement learning, model evaluation, reward design, and what actually makes a dad joke work.
Getting reward hacked by your own AI: How Adam’s model learned to game his scoring system by cramming in more puns, and what Goodhart’s law teaches us about optimizing for the wrong metrics.
Why getting to the point matters: How word economy became the strongest predictor of a better dad joke, and why teaching AI to commit to one idea proved more valuable than teaching it to be funny.
Making model training accessible to product teams: Why Adam thinks reinforcement learning will move beyond AI researchers and into the hands of product managers and marketers who understand customers best.

Where to find Adam Grenier
Website: https://www.adamgrenier.com/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akgrenier/ 
Twitter: https://x.com/AKGrenier

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 Adam Grenier, Founder of AI Matey
(02:09) What changed in three years of parenting and startups
(04:27) Advocating for two neurodivergent kids with different needs
(08:45) How AI Matey led to training AI on dad jokes
(13:33) Learning AI with goat screams and school photos
(24:11) How anyone can start training AI models
(29:17) What training on dad jokes actually taught the model
(32:02) What actually makes a great dad joke
(36:52) Putting the biggest AI models to the dad joke test
(47:09) Getting reward hacked by your own AI model
(51:05) Why the best dad jokes get straight to the point
(53:41) Bringing humans and kids into the judging process
(55:24) Why Adam fired an AI judge for being too slow
(57:13) What dad jokes can teach us about building better AI
(01:05:04) Can you actually teach a sense of humor?

Resources From This Episode:

AI Matey: https://aimatey.co/ 
DadBench: https://aimatey.co/dadbench/ 
GoatScreams: https://www.goatscreams.com/waitlist 
SmilePlease: https://smileplease.app/
ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io/ 
Thinking Machines Labs: https://thinkingmachines.ai/ 
Inkling: https://thinkingmachines.ai/inkling/ 
Tinker: https://thinkingmachines.ai/tinker/ 
Prime Intellect: https://www.primeintellect.ai/ 
Unsloth: https://unsloth.ai/ 
DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/ 
Gemma: https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/ 
Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app 
GLM: https://chat.z.ai/ 
Grok: https://grok.com/ 
Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/ 
OpenAI: https://openai.com/ 
Claude: https://claude.ai/ 
The Book of Mormon (Musical): https://bookofmormonbroadway.com/ 

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Support Startup Dad

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

Jackie Nesi, PhD is a clinical psychologist, researcher, and associate professor at Brown University. She is also the creator of Techno Sapiens, a weekly Substack newsletter with over 50,000 subscribers dedicated to translating the latest research on kids, technology, and mental health into practical advice for parents.

Beyond her academic work and her testimony before the U.S. Senate on social media safety, Jackie is a grounded voice in the parenting space who navigates the day-to-day balance of screen time in her own household. She is a mom of three young kids, married to a tech entrepreneur, and works to bridge the gap between complex psychological research and the practical demands of modern parenting. We discussed:
The disconnect between screen time panic and actual research: Why the "all screen time is bad" narrative isn't supported by science, and how parents can let go of perfectionist guilt.
The Transformation Framework: How specific features of social media (asynchrony, public reach, image focus, and permanency) fundamentally alter childhood friendships.
Dialectics in parenting: Practicing dialectical thinking to hold two seemingly contradictory truths at once (e.g., deeply loving your child while feeling completely overwhelmed).
Smart device staging: How to evaluate when a child is ready for a phone, running "tech experiments," and layering access from smartwatches and dumb phones up to full smartphones.
School phone bans and Yondr pouches: What the latest research actually shows regarding school phone policies, distraction, test scores, and student mental health.
AI as the next frontier: What parents and educators need to know right now to help kids navigate AI tools safely and responsibly.

Where to find Jackie Nesi
Website: https://www.jacquelinenesi.com/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-nesi-phd-b070595b 
Substack: https://technosapiens.substack.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/jacqueline_nesi/

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 Jacqueline Nesi, Associate Professor at Brown University and Techno Sapiens author
(04:01) What teens in psychiatric care reveal about online safety
(08:00) How social media transforms kids’ friendships
(13:49) Why two opposite truths can coexist in parenting
(19:20) Why screen time is about more than counting minutes
(23:31) Treating new devices and screen rules as experiments
(27:12) How to let go of screen time guilt
(29:45) How to know when your child is ready for a phone
(33:28) How to stage phones, smart devices, and social media
(39:23) What school phone bans can and cannot solve
(45:11) Why managing screens can be harder for neurodivergent kids
(47:34) Where The Anxious Generation gets the research right and wrong
(50:33) Having regular tech talks and putting people first
(53:24) How to avoid repeating social media mistakes with AI
(59:49) Lightning round: Toy baskets, existential nursery rhymes, and minivan temptation 

Resources From This Episode:
Techno Sapiens: https://technosapiens.substack.com/ 
How to Let Go of Screen Time Guilt: https://technosapiens.substack.com/p/how-to-let-go-of-screen-time-guilt
It Takes Two (PlayStation Game): https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/it-takes-two/ 
Lego Star Wars (PlayStation Game): https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/lego-star-wars-the-skywalker-saga/
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (Book): https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book 
The Emperor’s New Groove (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120917/
Will Ferrell (Actor): https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002071/

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

Harry Roegiers is the founder of Stuntpony; a live call coach for B2B salespeople. He’s spent the last decade working in sales performance, growth, and revenue strategy, helping teams improve how they sell and scale.
He’s also a father of three whose journey into parenthood started with a surprise. Just days after proposing to his wife Hannelore in Paris, they found out they were expecting their first child. That unexpected start helped shape his approach to parenting, staying adaptable when life doesn’t go according to plan. We discussed:
Turning off founder mode at home: Why the instinct to analyze and fix problems works at a startup but can backfire when your partner or kids simply need you to listen.

Breaking generational patterns: Why Harry wants his kids to talk openly about emotions while preserving something his own parents got right, giving kids the freedom to make mistakes.

Thinking like a good ancestor: How fatherhood shifted Harry from quarter-to-quarter thinking toward decisions that could benefit his kids and future generations decades from now.

Navigating neurodiversity without rushing to label: How Harry and Hannelore are learning to focus less on finding an answer and more on understanding what their daughter needs from them.

Treating joy as an obligation: Why Harry believes bringing joy to others will become even more valuable in an AI-driven world, and how he practices it at home.

Raising builders in the age of AI: How Harry’s eight-year-old built an app for turning leftovers into recipes, and why he wants his kids creating with AI instead of passively consuming it.

Where to find Harry Roegiers
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haroldroegiers/ 

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 Harry Roegiers, Founder/Investor
(03:39) A Paris proposal and surprise pregnancy
(06:58) What tinnitus taught Harry about the mind-body connection
(09:34) Why founder mode doesn’t work at home
(13:59) Breaking generational patterns around emotions
(19:40) Thinking like a good ancestor
(24:08) Losing his mom and thinking about legacy
(28:15) What his wife’s work taught him about real impact
(30:39) Contrarian parenting rules around swearing
(36:21) Noticing when your child may be wired differently
(37:56) Supporting your child without rushing to find a label
(41:14) Learning each kid’s different love language
(44:53) Why sharing joy is an obligation
(48:10) Vibe coding an app with his eight-year-old son
(57:19) Lightning round: training wheels, dad jokes, IKEA, and minivans

Resources From This Episode:
The Good Ancestor (Book): https://www.romankrznaric.com/good-ancestor 
Lovable (Website): https://lovable.dev/ 
Gong (Website): https://www.gong.io/ 
Chorus (Website): https://chorus.com/ 
Car back seat organizer: https://a.co/d/0fKOLA0L
Balance Bike: https://a.co/d/0gfvf8Bb 
Up (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10494

Dirk Doebler is the Founder and CEO at Parento Leave, a company dedicated to helping organizations build better parental leave programs. He lives with his wife and 3-year-old son.

Dirk and his wife spent serious time before becoming parents asking a fundamental question: Do we even want kids? And if so, how would we raise them without giving up our own dreams and lives? What emerged from that process is a 3-year-old raised with one of the most intentional, free-range, and contrarian parenting philosophies around. We discussed:
The case for free-range parenting: Why hovering at the playground harms your child’s development, and why Dirk lets his three-year-old problem-solve on his own.

Joining our life, not revolving around his: How Dirk and Kate built their parenting philosophy from scratch, choosing to bring their son along on their journey rather than putting their own dreams on hold.

Navigating pediatric feeding disorders: The surprisingly underdiagnosed world of toddler anorexia and sensory feeding challenges, and what their family has learned on the journey.

World traveling with a toddler: How taking 30 flights to 10 different countries by age three taught their son to embrace boredom, entertain himself, and love adventure.

Intentional tech and zero screens: Why Dirk casts videos to the TV instead of handing over a phone, avoids fast-paced cartoons, and views AI as a lazy substitute for authentic parenting.

Taking two paternity leaves: Why Dirk took a second, full-time parental leave when his son was 10 months old, and why showing up daily matters far more than just "banking" quality weekends.

Where to find Dirk Doebler
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ddoebler/ 

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 Dirk Doebler, Founder & CEO at Parento Leave
(03:06) What most parents get wrong: hovering and screens
(05:19) Deciding if we wanted kids and building a parenting philosophy
(08:05) Raising a child who joins your life instead of running it
(09:16) Understanding pediatric feeding disorders in toddlers
(14:12) Dividing household load and the "no quid pro quo" rule
(19:45) Free-range parenting: building confidence and independence
(24:45) Flying with a toddler: 30 flights and 10 countries by age three
(34:06) Tech boundaries: Jitterbugs, window-style TV, and no phones
(38:38) Why using AI for parenting is a lazy substitute
(42:12) Taking two paternity leaves and showing up every single day
(50:47) Lightning round: pilot dads, AI video fails, and minivans

Resources From This Episode:
Parento Leave: https://www.parentoleave.com/
Doona: https://www.doona.com/
Medicine Pacifier: https://frida.com/products/medifrida
The Confident Parent: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/28953434-the-confident-parent
Free Range Parenting: https://www.freerangekids.com/
Lilo & Stitch (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275847/
The Emperor’s New Groove (Film): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120917/

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Support Startup Dad

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