Reacts: New Mother vs Founder: Are the two incompatible? w/ Amy Sun

Amy Sun: literally like closing deals from labor and delivery, like between contractions. Like this stuff happens these women are doing it, and it is just mind blowing and just also, I just have like so much respect, right?

The amount of grit it takes to go. And do all of that is just incredible.

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Chris: Hey, I'm Chris.

Amy Sun: Hey, I'm Amy.

Chris: That's right. We couldn't get Yaniv on this episode because of time zones across Europe and US and Australia, because Amy's over in Silicon Valley. But that's all right. We have Amy Sun on today's episode. She has pretty much done it all. She's been a product marketing manager at Microsoft, a product manager at Uber, and Facebook and a partner at Sequoia, which is, if you don't know, and I don't know why you don't know, but it's one of the top venture firms in the world, and she is now the founder and CEO of, briefly.ai.

we wanted to have Amy on the show because Amy, you wrote an incredible piece on LinkedIn about being a founder and a mother at the same time, and I just thought that was really cool and a really, great perspective. obviously, a lot of people, hesitate to write this kind of thing.

It's maybe a little bit vulnerable. It maybe, opens you up to judgment or attack or, makes people hesitate to work with you or maybe makes them want to work with you more. Who knows? And so people tend to hesitate. To share this kind of stuff and I thought it was really awesome, really brave and really insightful and I wanted to get you on the show to share your thoughts with fellow mother founders or mothers to be, but also fellow male founders who need this perspective.

So it would be great for you to introduce yourself just a little bit, and then I have a little disclaimer I want to share. And then it'd be great to dive into the topic that you shared on LinkedIn.

Amy Sun: Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Chris. yeah, I'm Amy and thank you so much for the lovely introduction. I'm a product manager, startup. Person worked early on. The growth team at Uber, actually with you, Chris, we worked in a whole bunch of crazy things, over there.

Growth of the company. when I joined, I think it was about, 150 people in hq. When I left, it was closing in on 20,000, which is unbelievable in, the span of less than four years. so I had a little bit of experience in startups and growth. I kind of had the itch to start a company then, but I, like a lot of other founders sort of doubted whether or not I was.

Ready maybe I needed more experience, maybe I needed a different perspective. and the opportunity to see the industry from the other side of the table was very, very interesting. to join venture capital in industry, I knew very little about, and to meet a bunch of amazing founders across a ton of different, verticals and industries.

I think it gave me a much deeper understanding of how startups in Silicon Valley worked. but I always still have the itch to start my own thing. so yeah, a few years ago I left and started briefly, briefly is actually not the initial thing that we were working on.

We were actually working on a different, Startup at the time. And, we, like many other startups, ended up pivoting and so I think that being open about about the challenges of being a founder and also trying to balance your life right, is something that's really not talked about because. As founders we're the face of the company and there is a lot of pressure to put on this exterior of confidence.

We know what we're doing. This is always the vision. This is how we're pursuing it, but the reality is much messier. And so I'm happy to talk about pivoting. I'm happy to talk about balancing motherhood and startups. and anything else that, this conversation may take us.

Chris: Awesome. before we get started, I wanted to touch on something specific about me having this conversation, right. So it's obviously a little tricky for me to have the conversation because I am not and cannot be a mother. although I am a, father and a husband.

and so, you know, my observations in this are gonna be some combination of uninformed, wild speculation, theorizing, or maybe even just being devil's advocate to try to steelman your arguments or your observations. and on behalf of, any curiosity from the audience.

So I wanna put that out there. And I'm also say that like, we're probably gonna make. Some big generalizations or talk about cultural norms or gender norms. Again, these are generalizations for the sake of the conversation. So I'm gonna ask the audience to be kind to me and kind to you and kind about the subject in general, because these are, difficult nuance topics.

Right? I'm gonna actually, Blunder head first into the first massive generalization, which is, you mentioned that you wanted to start a startup during your time at Uber, but you hesitated because you didn't think maybe you were qualified or experienced or what have you. And this is the first generalized observation I've made, I find oftentimes, women will tend to underestimate how qualified they are for a role, and they will hesitate and you'll find that men will.

Run head first into something that they're completely unqualified for and just fake it until they make it. And, I'm not really passing judgment on those two things other than to say it's an interesting, common behavior that I'm seeing Across that divide,

Amy Sun: just speaking from my own experience, that's definitely true about myself. Looking back on the experiences that I had at Uber across product and growth and data platform, I actually think I probably was qualified, but it just felt at the time that I was like, oh, I just don't have like the, don't even know what experiences I thought that I needed.

Having gone through the founder journey, if you're thinking about starting a company and you're not quite sure if you are ready, the only real way to get the relevant experience is to try it and do it.

And that doesn't mean you have to like fully quit your job and completely, go all in before you even have the right idea. But just start building and shipping things and seeing if people like it. Like just getting those iterations under your belt of just doing it all yourself from sort of inception to distribution I think it's very hard to get that experience from working at any other job, I don't wanna speak for everyone, but I definitely noticed this in myself and I noticed that other people, yeah, maybe other people of the opposite gender don't necessarily doubt themselves as much.

Chris: yeah, that's absolutely true. I don't know that you can necessarily teach entrepreneurism. You can't necessarily pick it up. from being at a big company or being even an operator in a smaller company. it's one of those things. You just have to experience it to understand it.

you have to, in some ways make some of the mistakes yourself. Or if you find a great advisor, which plug for some of what I do, maybe help you avoid the landmines and see around the corners. as well. So let's talk about this post you wrote on LinkedIn specifically about motherhood.

And being a founder, maybe walk us through what triggered the thought to write the post, and then what was the main, point you were trying to make in the post?

Amy Sun: So I did write a post about, my experience with both balancing motherhood and my own company and I think that was, Me processing just a lot of the feelings that I felt in the past year since my son is born. So I started a company in sort of the end of 2020. We built a product, initially Around digital coaching. so the initial product is actually completely different from briefly in what we're doing now, I feel like that business. Only had product market fit during like certain part of the pandemic. And then, the world changed quite a bit in a way that turned tailwinds into headwinds for the company. so it was a very difficult time to like pivot the company we actually explored a few different products, I'll be honest. And then we like built a bunch of different things, but the one that we ultimately ended up on was briefly when we're doing meeting transcriptions and summaries. And we're actually allowing you to turn your meeting transcript into your, end deliverable directly, And so it was a, very taxing journey as a founder, in this like chime of uncertainty. And lot of founders here listening to this podcast, you probably relate to, that discovery phase or that pivoting phase. And at the same time as all of this was happening, I was starting a family, so I was, dealing with.

Pregnancy, which is a very difficult time for many women. and many women don't talk about it. Right. And it's like we suffer a lump Without support of the community. and it really is extremely physically taxing, like the whole nine months of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. it is like physically taxing, emotionally taxing, then you have a child, right?

And you're like responsible for the upbringing of this child. and just to deal with all of that. I feel like there is an expectation for women to just kind of carry on with their careers as if all of this wasn't also happening and it's not talked about enough. Like we don't talk about it, as a result, people don't know.

So some of our male colleagues are just unaware of these trials and tribulations that. the majority of women will face at some point in their careers. And, also we don't have that support system if we don't talk about it. So I think the goal of me writing that post was just to shine some light on what I was going through emotionally and physically as a founder and a mom, in order to let other women know that they're not alone in terms of their feelings and emotions and also that.

there are more of us like female founders who are also considering becoming moms or our moms. There's actually quite a large number of us, and I'm in one amazing community called, VC backed moms and, a couple of other communities of, of female founders where People really support each other.

And that support for me was so critical in that, especially the first, I mean, you have kids the first couple months after is just so, so difficult. and I don't think I could have gone through it without the support of the other people who've gone through almost exactly what I've gone through are very similar.

I'm really hoping that, more women talk about it and, maybe it's not impossible, because I think a lot of people do think that these two things are mutually exclusive, which, probably does lend to the statistic of like, why there are so few, venture backed companies that are founded by women.

In addition, there's also a lot of bias in the industry towards women and towards women who are in the process of having children or who have children, unfortunately.

Chris: Yeah, so I mean, you mentioned the difficulty in the month leading up to birth and then obviously the month following a birth. You know, Saw my wife go through that, to some degree shared some small part of that, or, was at least there to witness it. And, I remember I was told in the very, very early days and weeks, my job was to serve and protect her.

While she served and protected the child, right? She was the only one that can feed him initially, you know, and the only one that can do certain things. And so I needed to kind of protect her, physical wellbeing with like food and nurturing and her emotional wellbeing while she was doing the same for our child.

And it was kind of like, domino or cascading effect or concentric circles, if you will. And so being on the outside of that, that was taxing to me. So, I can't even imagine what it was like for her, to directly Experience it. you mentioned, you've heard people say that this is mutually exclusive.

In fact, in your post you said, You've been told by many tech and venture people that motherhood and startups were mutually exclusive and that you would've to sacrifice your career if you wanted a family. I mean, that's pretty direct and stark feedback. It's pretty binary. can you share a little bit more about even like, how they said that in what forum?

They said that, you know, without maybe naming the guilty, but like what categories have people said that. In what context did they say that maybe, how did they even phrase it? Like, it seems like quite a confronting thing for someone to say. And so yeah, I'm, I'm so curious about how that played out, I.

Amy Sun: Yeah. And the way they said it, oh yeah, I won't name names. and I do respect all of the people who ended up like saying these small things to me that had or actually really deep impact on me. Like I think about it all the time, but I don't think that they realize that. It was that big of a deal, the things that they were saying, which somehow makes it even more hurtful.

I'll give some context. So, yeah, I was working at a very hot, high growing startup, Someone who was actually just for a very short time, my manager, direct manager. and I were having lunch and he was talking about, how his wife was having kids, I think it was another child or something.

And he just casually was like, yeah, I don't believe that a woman cannot have more than two kids. And also a career. And I was just like, She was sort of stunned and then he just kind of continued the conversation as of like, yeah, like I was just kind of stunned that he would just share that with me, who was like a woman and did plan on having.

more than two kids maybe. Right. that was just like such a, like, he's just so confidently said that And someone else who was also in a position that was similar, to my manager. won't get too specific, some of these places that I worked, or it's very obvious what they were, but he said to me directly, I think you'll change your mind about working full-time once you have kids.

I was like, I don't think so. And he was like, no, I think, I think you will. And I was just kind of also stunned that he was just like, projecting this on me. And in my mind I'm like, well, if one day you are gonna have to decide like, who ultimately gets the promotion? Or an important.

Project or something like that. Are you going to think that I'm just gonna one day bail and just stop working full-time? if you are so confident in these beliefs that you're willing to say them directly to my face in this way what does that mean of like your actions based on beliefs that you hold on the inside?

those were only two examples, but there were a lot more examples that were like kind of subtle but in the same vein of like, oh, women, after they have kids, they're not gonna be focused on their career and That was actually very hurtful to me and it actually made me like more determined to like, do both.

And, and that was a lot of pressure too, cuz it is like extremely difficult to deal with everything at the same time, but I think that it is a belief that a lot of people hold and it works against women in many ways, unfortunately.

Chris: what's really interesting about this is like these are the people who felt. Confident enough or maybe unguarded enough to verbalize their own bias. and so you could imagine the number of people who did not, who may have felt that way, but did not actually verbalize it to you. you can imagine this is just the, tip of the iceberg in terms of the people who feel this way or felt this way about.

You being pregnant and being a founder and this kind of thing, and having a child. it's clearly a double standard in terms of men aren't asked about these things there isn't an assumption that they're gonna step away from the workplace when they have a child.

and this is one of these sensitive topics that are easy to get people upset. But, what I do wonder is like, How do families as a unit have it all? when both parents are working and both people have a child, is it necessary that at least one of them is the caregiver, even if it's the man?

Or is it enough to be a lot of help or grandparents or nannies and so on? I wonder like If we're applying pressure to the husbands or wives or both the family unit to do it all. And I'm not saying this is women's problem. I'm saying it's the family's problem understand where those trade offs are, What are your thoughts on that in terms of like, That pressure to, do both. is that just a made up thing or is that a real thing and how would you resolve that?

Amy Sun: That's a interesting question. this is something I think about all the time, as a father, I'm sure this is something that you're thinking about too, of like, where is it coming from, right? Like, where is this extra work and extra mental capacity and, emotional capacity coming from?

I think it really is. Unique to every family. And I think that there is a desire, a sense of bias to like, be like, oh, this is what my experience was. And It's a very human thing to project your own experience on other people. and a lot of, you Silicon Valley leadership, there are a lot of men and there are a lot of women who are.

Full-time mothers, which I a hundred percent respect, and I actually believe it is a harder job than maybe even being a, full-time ceo. Like it is extremely physically and mentally taxing but I think that they project like, oh, this is my experience. And so I, think that this will also be your experience you know, because my wife made this decision that you will also make this decision because you are also a woman.

And it is like very strange. I think that it is something that people do. And I think that might be a little part of the reason. I read this quote probably on Twitter that, you know, women are expected to work as if they were not mothers and they're expected to be mothers as if they're not working.

So it is definitely a double standard that's very hard to live up to. children need a lot of care and it does have to come from somewhere. so I don't have the answer to where it is coming from, but I, you know, I grew up in a household with two working parents and I think that it worked for our family, growing up, but we also had grandparents and there was other caregivers and, things like that.

 it's a struggle. I don't know what the answer is but I do think it does have to come from somewhere. And unfortunately, like There's biological things that you can't escape. and a lot more of the burden of parenthood, especially in those first couple of years,

falls on women.

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Amy Sun: The thing I didn't really realize, in my twenties was like, oh my gosh, if I want to have more than, one child, then it is such a long time commitment and such a physical commitment over a span maybe like four or five years, right? Where you are pregnant, you have the child, we're recovering, you have the newborn phase, then do their toddlers, but then you have to go through pregnancy again with another kid and You have to physically and mentally, go through that. Process again, except you have another child and it's even more taxing. And that whole, journey of starting the family is actually a very long time period. And unfortunately it tends to be, the time period that might be the most critical in your career as well.

I think more people should be aware that this is happening so that they can properly support, the women in their lives and their teams and companies.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And, do think that motherhood, or rather, let's say caring for a newborn and a young child, whether it's motherhood or fatherhood or, the collective parenting, is a full-time job. And it is extremely, extremely difficult.

I could not resonate with that more. And I said to my wife, and again here, the audience may excoriate me, I don't know, but I said, this is such a serious, important, hard job that it feels like either you choose to have an amazing career and we will get somebody to help us do that job. because we don't have any grandparents or anybody that are in a position to be able to help us.

And so it's like we need to. Make the choice intentionally where you go and do a different full-time job and we get somebody almost full-time to help us with the baby because we then we would have both full-time jobs and there's another full-time job to go do. or you should choose if you so choose to be a full-time mom and you should.

Not choose that with any guilt or resignation or any pressure at all, but that you choose that intentionally and throw yourself into that. and again, I can imagine some people saying, well, that's not fair. Maybe she can do a part-time job, things like this. But the hypothesis that I have is this is a full-time job.

And somebody needs to pick up the slack for someone not doing that full-time job, whether it's a grandmother, an aunt, an auntie, the two parents doing part-time jobs and making up the difference. Something, something has to give. and I think that the main thing that's unfair that we are discussing here is that it, defaults to the mother and it goes without acknowledgement of the mother.

that's definitely just like a giant. Black hole fail on society's part in general. So you talked about, in your post you wrote that motherhood ultimately gave you a renewed sense of purpose and drive to achieve your goals, and you kind of like snapped out of this bit of disillusionment and you said, no, this is gonna be awesome and I'm gonna make it happen.

I'm curious how or why did that happen? what was the aha moment? Where you thought, okay, I got this. and why do you think it gives you that sense of focus? I mean, there's some obvious answers I can guess, but I'd love to hear it from you.

Amy Sun: Yeah, so I'll talk a little bit about the Trough of Disillusionment, that I mentioned in my post for the folks that didn't read. It  so I was ceo, I am the c e of a early stage startup, and we were going through a pretty tough time, our initial idea wasn't exactly working And I also had. A baby and I initially thought, and this was the pressure that I was putting on myself that I don't think I should have. I agree. I think if you wanna work full-time, You need childcare. you can't try to like I currently don't have my child in my lap because we have childcare and I think childcare is an extremely important part of functioning societies and I think that it's something that's also not talked about enough. there's just not enough resources, from our society devoted to this very, very important job. So I initially thought, I was like, oh, I can take a month. I'll be okay. And then I'll, be back. My team is small, we're gonna grind, we're gonna do this and. Like a month after having a baby, I was like, there is no way I can do anything right now. Like, I can't think straight. I had like mastitis, I was really struggling with breastfeeding.

There was a US formula shortage due to a weird monopoly in the formula market in the US And so I was like, there was a lot of pressure to Do this very difficult thing because there was no other options for me. And the sleep deprivation, the postpartum anxiety just around keeping this new helpless child alive was like crippling.

So that I, even when he was sleeping throughout the night, I like couldn't sleep either. And just all of that together, I was just like, there's no way I can do this.

Chris: Sorry to interrupt you, but this reminds me of this, cliche saying of you sleep when he sleeps and it's like, Laughably bad advice because in my experience, at least my wife, Cannot sleep on demand. It takes her a long time to sleep, and she wakes up very groggy and she doesn't feel likely.

It's something she can do. And, when he sleeps, again, the house is a full-time job and I'm off on a full-time job, so there's, laundry and, dishes or, whatever else is going on. There's, vendors to manage or schedules to organize. There's so much else to do.

and you know, I'm off. Sitting pretty doing my day job and she's got lots to do around the house. And so this idea that you can just sleep when the baby sleeps is laughably bad. and a lot of people don't understand that. You know, friends who haven't had kids and this kind of thing.

Amy Sun: And sometimes. The baby will only sleep when you're holding the baby. And then what are you gonna do? Sleep standing up we didn't sleep when the baby slept. and so, there was a period where I was like, I don't think I can do this. I just can't focus, I don't think I can devote the amount of energy and mental capacity that my company needs of me right now.

and I just didn't know how long it would last. Like, is this my life now? is this what it is? but it does get better, that horrible face of It's lovely. I now looking back, I'm like, oh, it's like really nice. We have such a precious amount of time together with this like, helpless newborn baby and, and like us as new parents, figuring it out.

But, It does get a lot better. And then you figure out your childcare and then all of a sudden, life is just a lot more logistically difficult than it was but You do get some semblance of, life back and the brain fog. this is my personal experience and I know that not everyone has the same experience.

but that clarity will come back slowly and then I think once it did for me, It did give me a lot more purpose to what I was working on cuz I am a role model for my son and he's conscious now, you know, he's like mimicking me and starting to communicate and it's.

so wonderful. but I'm realizing he's like watching me and what I'm doing and, why was I even trying to build a company before, you know, like what was my purpose? I think back to my parents who like immigrated from communist China to start a new life for us in America.

and I think like, oh, we're trying to build something that. He could be proud of It's just such a stronger motivation than just like, doing it for you because that's less motivating for me personally than like being a good role model for him and building a great future and like creating all the opportunities that he deserves.

and it does get better. And now, you know, he's one. it's not the same as it was before I had a child, but I feel like I have some semblance of balance, I'm not like grinding the way I did in my early twenties, you know, when we were working at Uber and just like staying at the office all night.

Like, that's not my life anymore, but I am. Getting the things that I wanna get done. Our company is growing really nicely. We have good retention. Like I'm really proud of the products that we put out, and I'm really proud of the way the team works together. So it feels a lot better now, and I'm really grateful I didn't give up when I thought about giving up.

Chris: Yeah. Awesome. This is really cool. And so if I can summarize then, it sounds like. A, got better, he got older. you kind of got into the rhythm of it and it got better.

generally speaking, the logistics, you figured that out. it sounds like you realized the need for childcare and for help and it wasn't all on your shoulders. You clicked onto the idea that you are now a role model for him and you needed to model out what it looks like to have grit and have, entrepreneurialism and, ambition and be an awesome, operator.

that's really cool, and then it sounds like the last reason maybe was he gave you a purpose outside of yourself to build something epic. That might be some kind of legacy for him or even like a financial benefit for him. Right. And setting up the family for long-term success. Is that a fair summary?

Amy Sun: Yes it is. And I know it's like a, weird topic to talk about, but I think it's so necessary and everyone is different. Everyone's experience with motherhood and with startups and with their careers is different. So this is just our story. It's just my story and your story and like I just. Wanted to share it in case it resonated with anyone.

And I'm in this founder group, called VC Back Moms, and the stories from that group are just unreal. The things founders go through, like literally like closing deals from labor and delivery, like between contractions. Like this stuff happens these women are doing it, and it is just mind blowing and just also, I just have like so much respect, right?

The amount of grit it takes to go. And do all of that is just incredible and I think they should be celebrated more we should be celebrating. women or whoever are having children and also doing really hard things at the same time. and like recognizing that feat because I think that a lot of women and myself included, will not even mention it and just, carry on as if it didn't happen.

But there, I think we should acknowledge it and recognize it because motherhood is beautiful

Chris: You talk about celebrating people doing hard things while building startups, which themselves are hard things. I do think that, historically there's been this sense of you need to have a facade, a professional facade that does not.

Reveal any kind of distraction or, humanity that might, weaken your position or your professionalism in a, corporate setting. And I do think that has been diluted in Silicon Valley where people are showing up in like jeans and hoodies and, often tech companies have good maternity leave and paternity leave and, this sense of shed humanity is maybe a little bit more top of mind.

although that's not the narrative with the bro culture and stuff, but I, in my experience, it's been, it's been a little bit more like that. But now I think with Covid it's broken. That barrier down even further. People are working from home. You can see their kids running around in the background.

I just got off the phone with a great female executive that I work with, and her daughter was trying to get her attention and I was like, no worries at all. Like, talk to her and, you know, sort that out. is completely unsurprising to me. my own son does that. I put him on the video.

Call and like introduce him to my startups that I'm working with, and they all wave and they smile. Like the meeting goes from being this boring, dry, academic thing to like being all smiles and happiness. And so this, professionalism facade I think is, dissolving more and more. But thanks to Covid, thanks technology, thanks to Zoom and so on, so forth.

So I think it's pretty cool. So let's get really pragmatic. how do you organize your life? To make this work for your family, and I guess to be really fair and to be on topic here, how do you and your partner organize your life so that you both make this work? Because it's not all just on you.

Amy Sun: so my partner is also a founder. So we are two founders, who are parents. we both also work remotely. Our companies are fully remote, so Yeah, there's just a lot going on. we do have full-time childcare and I think that that is so necessary and I think that it is just unrealistic to put the pressure on yourself to both be a full-time caregiver and a full-time professional.

being a caregiver is a job. It costs a lot of money to have full-time childcare, and I think that's something that we also don't talk really a lot about. It's like the cost of childcare. I live in Austin, Texas, but in the Bay Area you can be expecting to pay like between 50 to a a hundred thousand dollars a year.

For childcare, in Austin, Texas is not that cheap either, There's a lot of different options. some people are very lucky to have, parents or grandparents, help. Like daycare or nanny or a pair

We do have full-time childcare and sometimes it's like a combination of all those things, or you're just like putting pieces together to try to make it work.

and every other founder, mom that talk to has a similar sit, like they are also piecing together lots of different kinds of childcare, to, it all work. and so we both work, remotely, wherever we are. And, try to make it work day by day. I use a lot of tools to try to automate as much as possible.

With ai, it's easier and easier, like even with, Pitch for my product briefly, it takes all the meeting notes for you and turns it directly into documents. So I don't have to waste any time like translating my notes into follow up emails or documents. but there's so many other amazing tools out there so that I can be as efficient as possible.

And, a lot of delegation, when I was younger, I tried to do it all. It was kind of a thing of pride for me that I could like grind and do both the high level strategic work, but also all the.

Necessary grunt work that needed to be done to do something. And now I realize I'm not the best person to do every task, the opportunity cost of my time is much higher now. Right? Because it's like, an hour that I spend trying to figure out this Task that I have to do is an hour of not spending with my son.

we always do bedtime like every single day. And, you know, it's actually nice to work from home because I spend time with him during the day too. You know, I'm like, oh, I have a, little break, between meetings or something, and I'll go hang out with him for a little, or play with him or help with his lunch or put him down for a nap.

And then I'll go back to my thing and then after he goes to bed, I'll. Get some more work done. So much more of a fluid thing and less of a, you leave for the office goodbye. You don't see them for, the next 10 hours and you come back and put 'em to bed. which I really like this, like work from home thing.

I'm actually a very big fan of,

Chris: Yeah, I'm a big fan of it as well, and my routine is very similar to yours, where I, between meetings will go and interact and hang out with my son and play with him. And, sometimes he'll run into my office and as I said, I'll show him on camera. I think what you just said there though is the key to this whole thing that makes it counterintuitive, which is, You know, I work with a lot of founders as an advisor, and a lot of what I do is help them focus on the right thing at the right time because they're often doing 17 other things that don't matter.

I think being a caregiver, you're a man, woman, or otherwise, Forces you to focus and forces you to do the most essential things and do them quickly and do them well because you don't have time to waste and oftentimes, Startups can be filled or any project can be filled with, grains of sand.

And at Uber, we used to talk about big rocks, right? And, having a child to look after forces you to focus on the big rocks and not fill your day with grains of sand. And that is really, really powerful, I think and counterintuitive it, can help a founder be more focused, more effective, more productive, because the other stuff they were doing was a waste of time.

Amy Sun: Oh, I completely agree. Completely agree. Like there's like so many tasks that you can fill your day with tasks that don't matter, there's like one or two major decisions that will completely change the trajectory of your company, and those are the things that you really need to focus on.

Chris: So I think this is a great place to wrap it up, Amy, because I think that is the real insight is that I think people with. Kids, have something to build for, rather than something to live for, something to build for. And, have. An increased sense of focus, I think because they're forced to work on the right thing or the most essential thing and not get wrapped up in all this other nonsense.

And I think those things are what make it counterintuitive and make them in many ways, a better kind of founder. And so, I'm really glad we hit on that actually. And, Amy, how can people find you on the inner webs and, connect with you and, learn more about what you work on?

Amy Sun: Sure. you can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Amy Sunday, like an ice cream Sunday. I'm on LinkedIn. my LinkedIn. Is son Amy, and you can check out my product. It's actually You can download it in the Google Chrome Store. Try it out, see if it saves you time, in your meetings and follow ups so you can spend more time with the people that matter in your life.

Chris: I love that you connected it to the topic. This is brilliant.

and also don't forget, if you are listening to this and you've heard a few of our shows and you've gotten some value from it, you have implicitly signed up for the Startup Pact. Which asks of you just a couple of simple things in return for this entertainment and value that we're hopefully bringing to your life, which is to subscribe, rate and review the show in your favorite podcasting app.

subscribe to our new YouTube channel. We need more subscribers over there. And you get to see my beautiful face, Amy's beautiful face, and see us talking in person. then also please share. one of your favorite episodes on your favorite social network. Tell your friends about it so we can help more founders be more successful.

alright, Amy, thank you so, so much for joining us. It was really great to have you on the show. maybe we'll bring you back to talk about pivots and other startup and fundraising topics. But in the meantime, we'll catch you all in the next one. See you later.

Amy Sun: Thank you so much, Chris.