2023 Update: Family, Work, and Vision
It’s been years since I last wrote something for this site.
So here’s an update.
A lot has happened. Here are the updates on my journey so far.
I’m going on 11 years married to my wife. And now, I share the same family dynamic as Ryan Reynolds: I have 3 daughters but I’m one of 4 brothers, so in other words I doubt my sanity every day.
I’m turning 33 in May.
Now living in Bel Air, MD. Why Bel Air? Longer conversation. One reason is my-laws live around the corner and are a big help with raising kids.
I’m still happily at Hopin. Working now as VP Multiproduct Growth.
Since launch, Hopin raised almost $1B and hyperscaled during the pandemic to over 1k employees as one of the “fastest-growing startups” but downscaled in 2022 as things reset. During that time, we acquired 5 companies and today operate as a suite of 4 products in market (StreamYard, Streamable, Session, and Hopin Events) and another product coming later this year “Project C”).
When I look at ~4 years I’ve been working with Johnny and team, I’m thankful. I’ve learned more than I ever imagined I would about tech startup disciplines, mainly product, growth, product marketing, launches, go-to-market, fundraising, hiring, and building team culture.
Party Qs is still going strong. If you google “questions app” you’ll find it as the top-rated conversation starter app. It has 2k+ questions and 48 categories, the most popular category is “Date Night.” It has 210k+ downloads and 6k MAUs. It makes money through IAPs but this year we’re exploring a physical card game to retail. Would love any and all advice on manufacturing a physical game product if anyone has experience there.
Entrepreneur’s Handbook, a Medium publication with 222k followers and a podcast. ~500k monthly reads. I have an ongoing contract with Medium and two editors running it for me while I focus on Hopin. It’s a great community and I’d love to publish more there this year. Some exciting updates ahead.
I made 33 new years resolutions, some of high level themes:
Thrive as a family of five
Reach [redacted] ARR for Hopin Session
Launch Hopin’s 5th product - a community platform
Launch the Entrepreneur’s Handbook community
3x growth of Party Qs (got some fun ideas)
Fast from alcohol 2 days a week
Create 6 pieces of content I’m proud of (1 down here)
My life now is at an interesting spot.
We’re in the hardest possible parenting stage with three kids under four years old. Sleep is scarce, especially for my wife. I haven’t picked up a book in months. It’s hard to find any time. There’s so much I want to do and achieve but I’m finding it difficult to balance my ambitions and my family.
The vision I have for the next five years is to experience two startup exits while raising a family that loves adventure.
The two exits are different types: 1) VC-backed and 2) bootstrapped. VC-backed is obviously Hopin. We’ll either go public or get acquired. The bootstrapped one is Party Qs. I’d like to grow it into a 7-figure exit.
Both of these journeys I’ll document in Entrepreneur’s Handbook. It’s nice how it all fits together.
For my family, I want to instill curiosity and imagination while also teaching them self-awareness, faith, and kindness. We’ll travel, learn skills and tell stories together, and meet lots and lots of people.
That’s my update! Follow me on Twitter for updates and thoughts along the way.
