We’re continuing to explore the ever-present elephant in the room of motherhood: “The Invisible Load.” It's all those behind-the-scenes tasks that keep our lives running smoothly, from meal prep to managing schedules.
Could the solution be found in AI? Avni Patel Thompson, founder and CEO of Milo, says yes.
In our episode, she explores the concept of the ‘modern village’ we must create and sustain to support working parents. Tune in to find out how her team at Milo is reducing and redistributing the unseen work.
In this episode, you'll discover the following:
0:00 - Introduction
1:09 - Avni's background and journey as an entrepreneur.
6:15 - Concept of the modern village
10:31 - How technology is turning parenting burdens into joy
13:15 - The importance of measurement in solving the invisible load
16:45 - Addressing the challenge of defining and solving the invisible load
23:24 - The emotional impact and real challenges faced by working parents
25:30 - Recognizing, reducing, and redistributing the invisible load
28:10 - How AI could be the solution for modern parenthood.
34:42 - Origin of the name "Milo", it’s current status in beta testing and how to access it
42:06 - The potential integration of Milo with other apps/services.
47:47 - The importance of teaching care skills to both genders.
50:21 - Thoughts on trusting AI and digital products.
55:33 - The mindset shift of recognizing the need for help in working motherhood.
Explore Milo!
Open Beta: joinmilo.com
Instagram: @join_milo
LinkedIn: Milo
In March 2024, Avni is inviting 1000 families to test Milo. Get started here: https://lnkd.in/gtrUPdED
Please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and kindly review the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can reach more working moms.
We always want to hear your thoughts, concerns, questions or guest suggestions – email workingmomhour@212comm.com.
Follow us!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/workingmomhour
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workingmomhour/
TikTok: https:/www.tiktok.com/@workingmomhour
Working Mom Hour Website: https://workingmomhour.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@workingmomhour
We’re continuing to explore the ever-present elephant in the room of motherhood: “The Invisible Load.” It's all those behind-the-scenes tasks that keep our lives running smoothly, from meal prep to managing schedules.
Could the solution be found in AI? Avni Patel Thompson, founder and CEO of Milo, says yes.
In our episode, she explores the concept of the ‘modern village’ we must create and sustain to support working parents. Tune in to find out how her team at Milo is reducing and redistributing the unseen work.
In this episode, you'll discover the following:
0:00 - Introduction
1:09 - Avni's background and journey as an entrepreneur.
6:15 - Concept of the modern village
10:31 - How technology is turning parenting burdens into joy
13:15 - The importance of measurement in solving the invisible load
16:45 - Addressing the challenge of defining and solving the invisible load
23:24 - The emotional impact and real challenges faced by working parents
25:30 - Recognizing, reducing, and redistributing the invisible load
28:10 - How AI could be the solution for modern parenthood.
34:42 - Origin of the name "Milo", it’s current status in beta testing and how to access it
42:06 - The potential integration of Milo with other apps/services.
47:47 - The importance of teaching care skills to both genders.
50:21 - Thoughts on trusting AI and digital products.
55:33 - The mindset shift of recognizing the need for help in working motherhood.
Explore Milo!
Open Beta: joinmilo.com
Instagram: @join_milo
LinkedIn: Milo
In March 2024, Avni is inviting 1000 families to test Milo. Get started here: https://lnkd.in/gtrUPdED
Please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and kindly review the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can reach more working moms.
We always want to hear your thoughts, concerns, questions or guest suggestions – email workingmomhour@212comm.com.
Follow us!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/workingmomhour
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workingmomhour/
TikTok: https:/www.tiktok.com/@workingmomhour
Working Mom Hour Website: https://workingmomhour.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@workingmomhour
You have to recognize the work, you have to make the invisible visible. You have to reduce the work, and so you have to use technology to reduce the amount that anybody needs to do. And then the last piece is you have to redistribute it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Working Mom Hour. Oh fuck, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Hi everyone, welcome to Working Mom Hour. I'm.
Speaker 3:Erica and I'm Madeline. We're working moms, business partners and friends with kids at different ages and stages.
Speaker 2:We know moms tend to get more done in an hour than the average human, yet are often misunderstood and underappreciated in the workplace.
Speaker 3:We are here to shine a light on the Working Mom experience, to help ourselves and others step into and advocate for the superpower. We are not experts. We're two women who have been there and are still there.
Speaker 2:kids, clients and all Join us as we cultivate more joy in working motherhood at the corner of calm and chaos.
Speaker 3:I'm on your side. I tell you it's my time to rise up, Live the life.
Speaker 2:I'm proud of and know you better go home. Welcome back to Working Mom Hour. Today we're addressing a topic that could be considered the elephant in the room of motherhood the invisible load. To help us understand and hopefully lighten the load, we're so excited to bring on Avni Patel Thompson. She is the founder and CEO of MyLo, an AI-powered solution and co-pilot that turns everyday communication, like text, voice memos and calendar invites, into structured sanity.
Speaker 4:Before kicking off this impactful venture, Avni spent years at big brands such as Starbucks and Adidas, where she saw firsthand how corporations can better support working parents. An entrepreneur at her core, she also launched a startup, Poppy, that connects parents with trusted caregivers. Without further ado, let's get to it.
Speaker 2:I tell you, it's my time to rise up, Live the life I'm proud of and know you better. Go home, Hi Avni. Thank you for joining us on Working Mom Hour. Thanks for having me To provide a little background. You started your career in corporate roles at Procter and Gamble, Starbucks, Adidas, and then you had kids. What gaps did you see in corporate America when it came to supporting parents?
Speaker 1:To be super honest, my girls are now 9, almost 12. If I had to be honest, it was less gaps I saw when I became a new parent and it was gaps I felt. Because it was gaps, I felt, I felt it was just me that just couldn't figure this out, or maybe I had missed the memo, or maybe I didn't understand how this was all supposed to work. 10 years ago, 10, 12 years ago, my experience of it was this just doesn't feel like it's the right fit, and I started a conversation of what might make it feel more aligned. The background is both my husband and I have had by that time, by the time we had kids, we had been in corporate jobs for each of us maybe close to a decade. It had given us incredible opportunities. We are both Canadian. We went from Toronto down to Cincinnati, over to Boston. We did a stint in China and lived in Shanghai. That's where we were expecting our first daughter and said, ok, let's come back stateside to have her and then start on this next journey together. And so here we were in Boston. I was back at the time, I was working for Adidas. We had this newborn. My family was across the country. In Vancouver. My husband's family was in Toronto. He was still at his demanding job at Gillette and it was just this whole thing of like. I don't understand how this is all supposed to work. I also come being Canadian Not that I had a direct experience with it but in Canada you have at least the one year of parental leave, and I say it as parental leave. There has been lots of different versions of that, but a lot of my friends have experienced that as the mother takes some portion, the father takes some portion and so, anyways, there is a more, I would say, progressive perspective on that. It has implications and we can certainly get into that on what the eventual career path is, but that's sort of what my maybe expectation was. I certainly knew in the US, having lived there for that long, that that's not what my experience was going to be, and I think I felt like I was supposed to feel grateful that I was given 12 weeks, somewhat paid, and then I had job protection for an additional four weeks. I felt like the feeling I was supposed to feel at that moment was gratitude that I was one of the lucky ones that had this.
Speaker 1:Again, all of our journeys are very personal into parenthood, like what a pregnancy is like or what that experience is, what the first X number of weeks look like. In our case, our first daughter ended up being colicky and having all of these different situations where we had to navigate and advocate for eventually figuring out that she had a dairy and soy allergy and all of these different pieces. The details are different for every family, but the overall that I've learned is very much similar, which is we sort of are told that this is the thing that everyone has done for generations definitionally right, and you just figure it out and you have this intuition and this instinct and I think there's part of it that is absolutely true. But the part that I feel like 12 years in that has done us a disservice is that support has to keep up with the realities of the times and in this space, if there is one single headline I was going to share, it's that I've realized just how much it has not kept up Up and down structurally from policy and all of those pieces, and I can get into it.
Speaker 1:My first foray into trying to figure out how you could use technology to solve some of these things was most foundationally into childcare and we can get into that and then, even as we go into now what I'm working on, with the invisible load and collaboration and just the work to be done that is just not seen but is behind the scenes mostly it's a story of. It is not seen, it is not supported and we do not have the investment that we need to be able to make it work. And yet we're all being told that it just works and you can make it work.
Speaker 4:What does a modern village today look like functionally?
Speaker 1:I think if there's one thing that I believe, it's this idea that we all need and deserve a modern village, and it's something that I've said for the whole past decade. It's probably like the red thread that runs through everything. Having lived in China and worked in Europe and lived in and just growing up between India and Canada, I think the thing that I look to is how have people communities done it forever? And then what works from our first principle standpoint? You'll hear a lot of science. I actually came up through the sciences of my undergrads in chemistry. I actually think like a scientist, even though I started my career in business. That comes in handy now, because this is just one big mystery. It's a big old mess and we have to just figure it out. We have to figure out first principles. What is going on? What is first principles? It's the process of asking like, is this the foundational thing? No, is this the foundational thing? Because I think we go off the low assumptions.
Speaker 4:What is the problem?
Speaker 1:Fundamental, core problem that is driving all of the downstream things. So a lot of times we'll talk about the friction. Let's take an example of Pajama Day, for example. I'm sure all of us who have kids yes, it's cool let's say that the friction, the spirit weeks are the worst. Exactly, you understand why they happen, but they kill modern day working parents or even just regular everyday parents, and the reason is because there's this piece of information that comes in and the part that we're all fixated on because that's the part that we see is the fact that we either miss that notice or the kids didn't go, or it's like a panic at like 8.05 when you're supposed to be already on the road to drop off the kids. But the upstream things if you're going to go first principles, it's like why is there a notice that is in an email or buried 10 things deep, and then what is it? You have to chase the trail all the way to the beginning Because you cannot just solve it at. I mean you could try, but it's also why I don't think we have solutions that are lasting and sustainable. You can try to do it at the surface level or you have to go all the way deep.
Speaker 1:One of the things I learned from my experience of building Poppy, which is the child care company, is I call it sort of my accidental startup, because here I was a parent to, by that time, two daughters my second had it was maybe four months old, and I think that's when I started to get obsessed with this idea of the conversation I keep on having with my friends is like we are both trying to manage these careers. We're doing these kids. I just don't understand how to make it work, and what we're trying to do is trying to figure out whether it's the child care part of it that can make it all work. Modern Village comes from this notion that it's the first principles piece for me, which is that if you have a safety net, if you have a practical someone that has my back, that's the thing that is going to help with some of these pieces, and so for me, a lot of this journey has been trying to figure out what is the first principles of figuring that out.
Speaker 1:For Poppy, the modern village, was there's incredible people that live in our community. It might not be people that I'm related to or that I grew up with, but could we find a way to find and vet them, match them to my family based on needs and style, and then have them come in when I needed them to. And so that was the simplest expression of that with Poppy. And now, as we kind of move into what we're working on in the Invisible Load, it still is a very similar thing, which is my husband has a demanding job, I have a demanding job, and there is no one in my family unit in my little village whose sole responsibility is managing all of these different details and the fire hose of information that modern parenthood is.
Speaker 2:But how can our modern village, whatever that looks like today turn these I loved when you said this when we talked earlier how can our modern village turn these parenting burdens into joy? Right, that's what we're all trying to seek throughout the day, or these moments of joy. For me, it's a couple of different pieces.
Speaker 1:One is just starting at the as I've been digging into the problem. One of the pieces of research that I found really impactful is from economist Diane Elson, and she's looked into a lot of unpaid care work and a lot of her work happens to be with a lot of the things in countries across the world. But she created this framework that says you have to recognize the work, you have to make the invisible visible, you have to reduce the work, and so you have to use technology to reduce the amount that anybody needs to do, and then the last piece is you have to redistribute it. So whatever is left over after technology and after recognizing all of it, then let's figure out great ways to redistribute it across more shoulders, more hands. So in her examples, a lot of it has to do with the innovations of washing machines or having running water and things like that.
Speaker 1:As we think about the technology, I take that framework, especially in the work that we're doing today, and the invisible load, and I try to apply it.
Speaker 1:Which is, what is the invisible load?
Speaker 1:And if it's invisible, it's in my head, it's in my inbox, it's tucked away in text messages then how do we make the invisible visible, I can certainly talk to how we are doing that and how I think about that, but once it's visible, now this is a really critical piece that I think we have under invested in.
Speaker 1:We need technology, we need machines that take that and reduce the amount that anybody needs to do. I think those conversations around and I certainly have them with my husband if I'm doing all of the sports registrations and I'm managing all of these calendars, all this kind of stuff, the conversation that we have, which is a necessary conversation, but the conversation we're having is how can my husband do more so I can do less? The thing for me is, though, I don't think anyone ought to get a soccer email and have to manually have to input all of those dates into a calendar. Even if my husband were going to do that, I do not wish that on him. That is a piece that technology ought to do, and so that is almost singularly where I'm focused, which is how do you build technology that sees that work, measures that work and then takes that work and eliminates it so that no human has to do it? We tell me more about this measurement.
Speaker 1:No, so I'll finish that thought just to say then the little bits that are left over, then we can choose who to share it with, who to distribute it with. So it might be my husband, it might be my mom, it might be my nanny, it might be a neighbor, but now, because it's no longer invisible, that context isn't in there. A lot of things I hear and I feel lots of my fellow moms or whoever is running point will say they just don't have the information and so if I ask them to do it, it's just easier for me to do it myself. And the reason that, again, when we're talking about first principles, is why are you saying that? I have to ask why five more times to figure out that there's invisible context that you've accumulated. It's expertise that you've accumulated. It is a real thing. It is not just you nagging or being high maintenance or like having a higher standard, it is you are the expert in this and you have accumulated that over months and years of lived experience. And there's no place for you to put that To say, if I want someone else to do it for me, the job standard does not change. A judge does not change if you take a vacation from your job and somebody else back fills you. They don't get to sit in that chair and choose what they get to do of your job. The same is in this space, and so we're trying to figure out how does that work.
Speaker 1:On the measurement side, as I've looked into the work of the home that happens behind the closed doors, there are really good time use studies and, again, I'm not an economist, I'm not a researcher, so I'm just trying to understand how all of this works and I'm honestly, more of the applied side of things, which is like I observe and I try to figure out how it works. But most of our time use studies are focused on the scene work or the explicit work. So childcare, dishes, laundry, meals super important they do take up the largest chunks of the work. Childcare they're important because we do need to run this process through, but we do not have time use on the invisible load, on the scheduling, logistics, the planning, the coordination, the anticipating. No, and again you can then follow it through like how might we measure it and all of these things. That's less the question for me. We could figure that out.
Speaker 1:We're innovative, we can figure things out when someone gets a school email. What are the downstream implications of that? How many minutes does it take? How much crud is accumulated and so? Okay, so that's for one school email. Times it by 10, which I'm sure, like on average, most of us get. So that's the measurement part. I want to build products, I want to build solutions, but I cannot build a thing if I'm running blind on what the problem is and I'm looking at just the surface level. This is an iceberg. It's a massive iceberg and to date, most of us have been focused on the top bits and what we don't see is this massive underneath part and, honestly, the last four years, that's where I've been focused which is like the massive under the water parts of it.
Speaker 4:It's amazing Like in our brains. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, right and the above waters. Just for many of us, this arrival and you said you know we're fooling ourselves that we're getting to gender equity if we don't tackle this and you're getting to this now, a lot of the visible load for many of us is really undefinable. What's that path forward? And I'm so curious how do you go about solving for something that can't be easily defined?
Speaker 1:Yes, I think that's the that's the right word to use Can't be easily defined, but it can be defined. It's not impossible to find. I think the point is is that if we put our you know, ingenuity and resources and everything added, we can define it. So this is this is a complicated question, because I think then I get very this is near and dear to like why I continue on this mission. I don't think, like you know, coming from my background, you know from the sciences into the corporate world, all manners of different products I never saw myself as like ending up in this space solving this problem. To be honest, I mean, like all of us have our different relationships with equity, the topic of equity, but I never saw myself as a whatever label you want to put on it feminist or, like you know, someone who's an activist driving for gender equity. As it turns out, that's exactly what I am. You know I've spent my I have a chemistry degree. So, by the numbers, like you know, I grew up with brothers. Like I grew up in situations where I was very comfortable from a gender perspective, being the minority and I never, you know, for me personally, it never really impacted the things that I wanted to go do. So I went and pursued a career in corporate America and I, you know, in consulting and the MBA and all of this stuff and all of those places. The numbers were always, you know, at best, like you know, a third women and two thirds men and then even into into tech and being a venture-backed tech CEO. The thing that I've seen and again mostly this is off of my classmates and peers From HBS, because I will say, from one point of view, we have had the great privilege to go to incredible institution and be given all of these different opportunities. And if, among my peers, we are struggling so hard to and we have all the resources, from financial to like all of the things, and if we are struggling to make it work I'm not entirely certain how anyone makes it work, but it is a very personal realization and seeing my friends who have worked their entire careers at being like big and bold and ambitious I will use these words because they are forceful but like being forced to make a decision that people say is a choice but is actually not a choice, because you can never. It's a false choice. You cannot put my family against my work and that is never going to be a choice, right? And so I think I started experiencing or seeing that with Poppy, because all of the and again it ends up being women because of the gender wage gap and the motherhood penalty. Like I've understand these things now. I did not understand them when I had my girls and I was just experiencing this in my early 30s, hitting the stride of my career when I should be going for big and bold things, and then I was like, well, but I don't understand how you do this and it's never going to be a choice.
Speaker 1:And so all of this, to say we are fooling ourselves if we are. We're working on lots of different things. These are interrelated topics childcare, eldercare, paid leave, you know, equity with our partners all of this kind of stuff are all interrelated. But on my part, we are fooling ourselves if we do not solve for the invisible load. This is a whole other job that we're requiring and asking. And, frankly, like we've hijacked women's brains to be the computer to run all of this and to do it without support, without technology, without Like any of that, to say, oh, you've got this whole other job plus this one. Then we're fooling ourselves when we say, oh, I'm taking a step back or a step out of the workforce for now. If that is truly your choice and that is the right decision for your family, I will be the very first to support it, but my experience in talking and working with and serving thousands of families, it is not a choice, and so that's where I get, like, the underlying part of it for me from a personal mission comes from there.
Speaker 1:The second part, tied to that, though, is we are seeing a shift in the partners, and I'm talking about a somewhat traditional kind of family makeup, which is also a point where, like, lots of families don't look like that the heterosexual, like, you know, husband and wife but in those situations, we're seeing a marked change Like and I'll speak from like my relationship, like how my husband grew up, how my brothers, or like any of these people, like how they grew up is not how they're trying to be, they're trying to be present, and the vast majority that I can see, but, again, we do not have tools or support for effective collaboration.
Speaker 1:We don't have tools or support for my mom to help in a way that doesn't feel frictionful, you know, between the generations or between my partnership. And so, yes, fundamentally, first and foremost it is we need to help. What is 95% of the job done by women, but like the job just full stop. And then, second of all, we need to make it easier, and this is where I tie it back to the village, because whether I'm talking about the village being me, my husband and my mom, or I'm talking about my village being our school kind of network and our neighborhood, or I'm just talking about all of us being parents and like just how do we support each other? The point is is that we don't have something foundational at the front that recognizes what modern parenthood is today, with all of that information in the age of the internet, all of this like dual income, higher household income but less time, so more outsourcing, and this, you know, just all of this stuff that we're expected to manage just with our brains.
Speaker 2:And I have to say, like when you said the quote about how we've just accepted women's brains as being hijacked as the computers that hold this like, I had to take a deep breath for a second. It's true, it's true. Nate Barghetti I don't know if you've ever watched him as a comedian. He's a comedian and he has a great bit on how the school called him because his kiddo was sick and he was like, why are you calling me? I'm the dad. And then the bit ended with all right, I'll come Tell me what school she's at.
Speaker 1:Like he made a joke about just how it is still very, very common that our brains I will say as an aside, you know, at the start of the school year I think I was sent one of these memes that was going around was like I'm sorry I had to quit my full time job because I have to read my kids emails. You know, and I think you know, for me there's a part of it. I think it's like I'm obviously forced for the trees at this point. I'm like too far in. But I think that's where the idea of like I love the memes, I mean, like I love a good joke as much as the next person but at this point we don't need memes, we need measurement, we need actual action.
Speaker 1:And so I think that for me is like I suppose you could squint and say that's progress, that we're talking about it and that we're doing this and it's in the like. You know the cultural layer of like, all of that. But I'm greedy, like I. That's not good enough, right? Like I don't want to just make jokes about it. There's nothing to be done about it and it's and listen, it's hard when I use words like hijack women's brains. I try not to make things feel so charged with emotion, but at this point it's.
Speaker 4:I'm not trying to describe value judgment, but it is emotional. You're shining a light on a real challenge that so many of us are facing every day, and I think that's a really important thing.
Speaker 1:Our relationships don't stand a chance. I'll make it even more personal there, which is, I will say, like a lot of times when I talk to parents they turn into pseudo therapy sessions because we do not have a space to like be seen and be heard in all of this. But the number one fight, the number one friction is I'm happy to help if you just tell me what to do, and to which Give me the list, totally, give me the list.
Speaker 1:Which is why we're, because it's like when did I become your manager? When, in this relationship it's not actually helpful? Yeah so, but then there's no productive place. I'm again, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a relationship person, but like there's no productive place to go from there, right, and so that's just one of the fights, but there's all these other ones. It's just like who's the default parent, who's the person that gets the phone call Society? We can't solve all of that. I mean, I want to and we will, but for my part, again, it's like go deeper and go deeper. Why is there that fight? Why is that school calling?
Speaker 1:Exactly, you have to keep on going upstream, and the upstream part for me is this you have to recognize the work, you have to reduce it, because you've actually materially reduced it, and then you redistribute it, and then let's and there's tools for each of these different pieces. If you do that, that's where I've been focused, which is like, okay, I've been working for four years to recognize the work, which is like my work as a scientist is to go, and this is very different, by the way, than Poppy. Poppy was, you know. I knew what the problem was Is that I needed someone to show up at the door that was trustworthy and was capable and qualified, do the care things, and then I could pay them and then, like, they could go on their way and then we could do it all over again.
Speaker 1:What turned out to be really hard with Poppy was operationally. To do that safely, well, delightfully and scalably is incredibly complex. This problem is the opposite. It is we talk about it, but we do not have a line item, tick and tide, measured and all of this kind of stuff of like what is the invisible load? It is one part of reading emails and it's two parts of keeping everyone on the same page and it is like this, and so that's what I've been. I mean it feels kind of crazy, but like that's what I've been. I mean I've got incredible like an incredible team and investors and stuff like that that are on board about that. But it's taken a long time because we have to actually do the work of recognizing what the work is before you can even begin the work of saying what is something that like? Go start solving it.
Speaker 4:So I know you've been alluding to this a lot throughout the conversation, but more specifically, how might AI be the solution we've been waiting for?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I will put it in the context of it is not just the solution, but it is a. It's the missing piece I've been waiting for, I guess I'll put it that way. And so when I started on this journey and back in like 2019, I had I was moving on from Poppy and then trying to figure out like, okay, if I'm not going to be working on this one, what is it that I want to continue to work on, when I realize I never set out to start a childcare company? It's always. The mission, has always been how do you use technology to make modern parenthood feel lighter and more delightful and more connected? And so that for me was then by that time, my girls were starting school and like the invisible load was like the thing.
Speaker 1:I think the piece for me was how do we do these little experiments to go figure out what this is? So I would say, for two to three years, I use the two tools in my toolbox, which is software and humans, and so, in my estimation, the existing services or solutions that are out there sort of fall into one of those two buckets. You either have apps or software that are like shared calendars. To do some semblance of that I actually frankly wanted to say on that side because, again, having learned from Poppy, I wanted to build something for the millions that is affordable, accessible and scalable, and those are the things where software excels. On the other side, you do have human assistant things, so virtual assistants or that sort of thing, which is like you're going to go get someone else to help you do some of this stuff. There's a number of different people who are on that side of things. But again, for my part, having come off of Poppy and understanding two things One is it just gets really, really hard to scalably do that. And then the second part is actually more important to me, which is if I thought it solved the problem, I would of course have gone there. But the problem is it is hard to have another human in a part-time context on your most important context, and so for me, I just don't think it actually solves the problem. You can execute like you can hand off and outsource more of the execution, but my estimation is that that's why it doesn't work. I have lots of options for execution things. It's the anticipation and the planning and all of that stuff, and so that's where I stayed. A little bit more on the software side and trying to figure that out.
Speaker 1:The problem was we built lots of really good things, things that push the needle kind of forward, but again, I'm the first person we're solving for I will be selfish to say it has to work for my family, my husband, my mom, my two girls first and at the end of the day, I kept on feeling like I'm just you cannot hand an overwhelmed person yet another thing to manage and feel like that feels like a solution, and so that's the part that I kept on hitting, running up against. I will say in this, like you know, this space, I was actually at the point of almost shutting the company down in the summer of 2023, because I had my job as a founder, my job as a scientist, whatever it else it is. It is to go figure a problem out and go see if you can build something that can create value in the world. That's sort of simply kind of what it is, and at this point I tried a lot of different things, worked with incredible people, and it just wasn't working, because software is you cannot take logic, kind of ultimately rules based software to solve entirely this human, messy, beautiful friction, kind of human space and there was a fundamental mismatch. And so I again, I don't come from this space of AI either, but I will go and knock on any door. It is required to be able to try to figure out if there is, if there's something here, and so I started playing around with just some of the like little AI playground things.
Speaker 1:To be honest, I didn't really, to be completely honest, I started playing around with it because I thought I was going to need to go get another job and I thought this could be a cool next place. But I was on OpenAI's playground probably like a year and a half ago, September, and I was like typing and I was like what am I supposed to type here? I see people like writing like Twitter threads and things like that. I'm like I'm not really into that. If this thing was really worth its salt, it would figure out what school lunches are for next week. And so, as a lark, I sort of wrote. I was like we don't eat beef and pork. The girls generally like these types of meals. Tell me what next week's school lunches are.
Speaker 1:And it did it. It didn't do it perfectly. I knew nothing. I knew nothing about, like you know, prompting or like all of these type of things. But if you squinted, you saw something in there that I've never been able to get to, and that's when I was like, oh my goodness, this could actually be. I didn't want to get to you again. Like you have to remember, this is like four years into a very long, hard kind of and eight, if you want to put it all of it together Fast forward through some of the other relationships in the past, and all of this kind of stuff got connected back in with OpenAI and we started.
Speaker 1:I started working with their researchers and saying, like, for this use case, how could you apply the like, the cutting edge of what is possible?
Speaker 1:But I will also say it has always been a tool. It's been the missing piece, and it is the careful orchestration with software, with human guidance and then AI that makes the thing work. And the thing is the thing that I've always wanted, which is I want someone right here at my back in my family unit that I trust and understands how we do things, and every single time I get hit with something a school email, a reminder, whatever else this is I toss it to them and their sole responsibility. Their sole training, their sole everything is to constantly have my back, my husband's back, my mom's back on like how everything is running. What are conflicts? What's happening today? Who needs their violin? Who needs their library books and to do that job? We can certainly get into the details, but that's what's possible. There's lots of bigger conversations and like necessary conversations about AI et cetera, but in this instance, I really want people to give it a chance because in my estimation, it's like literally our only chance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my gosh. I'm so fascinated and exciting and hopeful. So your startup is called MyLo. What does MyLo stand?
Speaker 1:for I love a good naming kind of challenge, but it stands for my important loved ones. I think, at the core, this has never been a productivity thing. I think a lot of people look at it and say like, ah, another productivity thing. And the thing I want front and center is it's not a productivity thing. It is, instead of trying to jam more things into a small amount of time, I want parents to have a chance at focusing on the things that matter most, which is, frankly, my role as a parent, my role as a partner and my role as a professional. Too much of that, I mean.
Speaker 1:I'm sure all of you are familiar with the Big Rocks analogy, which is, if you have, like you know, big Rocks and Pebbles and sand, like you have to put the Big Rocks in first, because if you put the sand in first, you never stand a chance.
Speaker 1:Well, this is what we're doing with our lives, with our families. We put in the sand like the nitty gritty of school emails and reminders and who's got their violin, and then we get to the end of the week and we're like, oh, I never had that date night with you, or we never talked about this, or I never got on the ground and, like you know, played a board game with my daughters and that would have been really meaningful. And it's not because we don't have those intentions, we're just not set up to actually do them. And so it stands for my important loved ones, because I want to keep it front and center, even if no one else knows like what it means. But it's that our mission is to give parents a chance to be able to be the parents that they want to be, and the partners and the professionals, because then we're serving as the force field on that.
Speaker 2:And you're in beta test mode now, right, how is it working?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I would actually say because I'm like I don't know like labels, all that specific but I would actually say, like the first, this last, like nine, six to nine months, we were handed fire, which is this like very new technology, and we've been trying to figure out how to put it to use without burning the place down. So I would actually call it like we've been in a small like closed alpha actually like even upstream of that, with a small number of like incredible families across the country, about 60 or 70 families, enough to know that there's representative. I'm talking about families in Lafayette and Cincinnati as much as I'm talking about families in like Brooklyn and San Francisco and across all manners of like working and income and all of that kind of stuff, because I need this to work for all manners of families. And so now we're actually in a place where we're super excited to get like a proper what I would call like a research preview or a beta out there.
Speaker 1:The tricky part of AI, because we're so early, is that there's lots of things that we've talked about.
Speaker 1:It can hallucinate or it can miss a thing or it can get it wrong, but I feel confident at this point that it does enough well enough that it would help all of us not have that crazy kind of overflow feeling of like I missed a thing or whatever that is, it's still a period where we need to test and learn, and the only way I know to be aggressive in testing and learning to go fast and be aggressive, but be careful, because it's again such a place that we have to do very carefully is to do with others.
Speaker 1:And so we're actually entering next week what we would call like a research preview. It's an open beta, and so anybody who wants to test and try it with us is welcome to do it, and we welcome it. And then, who knows, the hope is that it's only about like 10 or 12 weeks and then it's in a good enough place that we can get it out there. But again, the bigger point is I'm just super excited to share this with other parents and have them play a part in this as well, and so is this just on the App Store.
Speaker 4:You can go and download Milo.
Speaker 1:It's actually not even App Store. So what we found is that the simplest thing is SMS. Sms and web and the calendars you already used. And for me, I want efficacy, which means I think the best way to do that is to meet people where they already are and where they're at is SMS, their work calendars and all of that stuff. There is a web app. So again, you need a surface to be able to see and do all of these things and it backs it up. You just go to joinmilocom and starting next week it'll be the new site where people can just sign up. They'll get the SMS that also get the web.
Speaker 1:But what I'm really excited about is if parents connect up their existing family calendars, their little handbooks from the school or whatever else it is, milo can already sit on top of that and then keep everyone in the loop. It'll be the one central place instead of my brain, your brain that all of this information resides. And then if somebody wants to ask Milo, like what's for dinner or what's the school absence form or who's the dentist, milo becomes that someone that you get asked and then from there, the part that I'm actually super excited about is that we've been working and testing and trying the conflict anticipation part of things. So it's not just the what, but I will say that's like hugely helpful, where I no longer have to be the person saying don't forget your violin, and et cetera. It's on Sunday. We'll send me a text and say, hey, here's what's going on this week, so that you'll send the text to me and my husband here's what's going on this week.
Speaker 1:Here are a couple of the tricky bits of these traveling to New York next week and so we're probably going to have to take a look at these pickups, or you know, sia has a doctor's appointment or whatever, and so we're trying to make it feel really light and simple.
Speaker 1:But that logic is terribly complex, and so that's where I'm super excited to get other people to try it out, because what constitutes a conflict? You have to almost be a parent to understand what the implications are, to understand that like this isn't an actual conflict, which is like one kid's going in this direction, this other kid's going in here, it just means that you have to have two people to do that versus a different thing which is like actually no, you have to make a choice of like which thing are you going to do so anyways. The bigger thing is is that all this work continues, but the more that we have other people kind of testing it in their realities and just asking one simple question did it make my family life better for me today? That's literally what we're focused on Incredible.
Speaker 4:I'm very excited to test it out and I love that it's text message based. That does feel lighter.
Speaker 2:Instead of another app that you need to program and download and pull up and use and then use. Does it think to? So, if you're using apps for like Instacart and Door Dash and meal delivery services, does it communicate with those apps too, like if they're part of my modern village, which they are, they're MVPs of my modern village.
Speaker 1:So I will say the technical answer is absolutely we can, and it's more of the how. For me, like, what you're talking about is the execution bit. It's the third piece of it. In my village I have some number in our realities. Those people, those some ones, can be someone close to us, like my mom or my husband that's actually executing on the thing, like buying the groceries. It could be a collaborator, like my nanny or someone else is going to be doing it, or it can be an app or a service, right, like is doing it, and so I sort of see those as equivalent, as long as they have the right information to be able to go do it. You actually have a huge choice of who actually goes and does it. That is all possible and it's certainly on our roadmap, but for me that's the last piece, right, that we need to kind of bring in, because for me, what's more important is someone's in the kitchen and you're out of milk or you finish. The soy sauce is the actual like, you know, more relevant one. Everyone notices the milk. No one notices like. The last thing of like I don't know soy sauce or maple syrup or something like that. I'm Canadian, I'm a, but those are the pieces that. How does that end up not on a posted or the whiteboard or texted in the moment while I'm in a meeting? How does that come to some central place? And then how does that end up on like the net, like the end grocery list, and then how does that into the hands of the person that's actually going to go do the things, or meal planning. How does meal planning happening happen in an easier way, such that you can figure out what the ingredients are onto the grocery list?
Speaker 1:In my world that's the harder part. That's the part that's driving one person to feel I think someone mentioned, you know, if a partner says, oh, I'll go get the groceries, and that actually drives a lot of anxiety because it does for me. I mean, this was actually a specific example that happened in my household a couple of months ago where my husband was like I'm happy to go get the groceries and I actually had to sit down and say like when you say that, I know you're saying that it's going to be helpful, but it drives anxiety for me because for you to go and get those groceries, I need to look at the calendar and figure out what are the girls going to have for lunch? What are we going to be making for dinner? Then I need to figure out the groceries and then I have to walk through the kitchen and now that's 30 minutes of time that has to happen before you can just go and get groceries. It's not that I'm not appreciative, it's that we need to talk about that other bit.
Speaker 4:At one point I responded my husband also, like within the past month or so, offered to get the was. Like I'll go get the groceries. And I think my response was like he was like what, where's your list? And I had like a visceral reaction, like I don't have a list, I'm not, I can't, I don't do a list, I can't do a list. And then I think I said just get all the things, get the things that we eat, get the things. Like I had no response and just also totally expected that he would have the same mental list in his mind that I have going all the time, which I certainly don't wish that on him either.
Speaker 1:Can I also add, because I've had to, like, I've studied this side of it as well Again, it is because, again, it's not about villainizing it. Where there is emotion and where it feels like it's being villainizing, you have to go deeper. And so why? Why is it that all of our partners are doing this Right, like? I would argue that probably all of us grew up in very different places, in very different ways, and our partners, and yet we're talking about the same thing. So why? And so there's a couple of different pieces.
Speaker 1:If we're going to teach our girls to code, we have to teach our boys to care. We have an uneven socialization of what we learn. So I grew up again with brothers, but the expectation of what they would do and the nuances of like, and this is a deeper kind of thing. So, again, there's only so many crusades.
Speaker 1:But the thing is, is that a lot of times the like we were taught how do you understand that a avocado is ripe? And or like, how do the work of care is skilled labor and we do not recognize it as such as a society and we have to. And so when we get into these things of like, you're nagging or you're telling me what to do. The mismatch is we were trained as experts in the art of care the art and the skill of care and that did not happen over there, and so there is a, there is a Delta, so there's a couple of ways we could, like you know, close that Delta. I could be your teacher. I think in most partnerships that feels not really great because it doesn't happen in a productive way.
Speaker 4:I don't want to be your mother.
Speaker 1:Yes, no, I don't, and that's the. That's the conversation that happens. There could be some magical I don't know in the future, like modern home egg kind of thing that we actually rethink is when we think about home, we think about I don't know, like under eighth grade you know, yeah, so you're, you're baking.
Speaker 1:What is modern home egg? It is an art, it is an act of love. So what is all that? The second thing I'll just say is what? What do I think is the promise?
Speaker 1:Like, not all of us grew up in the same kind of understanding of how to do things. We do not have an innate understanding of how to mend clothes or if a kid has a sore throat, and all this kind of stuff. There was this wisdom of the village that got passed down, and things like that. Not all of us come with that, is it? Is it, instead of assuming that people have this knowledge, or we go to the internet to be overwhelmed by all of these different options? Is there some other future option where, if I've never had to do this work, I can ask a trusted source and say you know, I've actually never had to do laundry before. What are the considerations that I need to think through?
Speaker 1:And now, this is not gendered, this is just about the work. If I've never done laundry before, do not shame, do not like, but just state the facts. You want to be thinking about these things, and so that's how we actually think about this, which is like a lot of our partners did not grow up being socialized to this information. We're being put into a situation to pass on that information, which is just problematic in lots of different ways.
Speaker 1:Is there another way to maybe like, does Milo have a thing where, like like chat, gpt, and you can ask it about, like you know, what's good to visit in Paris? Similarly, you could just ask Milo, hey, I need to do laundry for the kids. I'm seeing that, you know, sia has a rash on her arm, and can it be a store of trusted data, like based information that says, ah, here are the things you need to think about when doing laundry. You might want to consider a sensitive like detergent. I don't know what are all the things, but that's my bigger, the bigger thing, which is, yes, let's solve for the invisible load, but let's enable expertise in the art and the skill of within the home.
Speaker 4:And you're among peers who love and appreciate and use AI every day, as many of us probably do, without even knowing. But for those who may not trust AI, do you have any words of wisdom to address that?
Speaker 1:I don't know if they're words of wisdom, but they're just words of candid sharing. I think when we talk about trust, that is a relationship, right, like whichever way it is right, and that isn't, it should not be, it should not be defined or limited to just AI. I think we've had complicated relationships with social media and software. I think we have complicated relationships with vendors and like others, but like it is all complicated. When we talk about trust and again, I ran a childcare company right, so when we're like trust is front and center and that is at the human level, right, like, what does it mean to trust? I think about it for, and again, those places, which is it is not just on the AI parts you ought to and you need to trust the whole thing up and down. So I would say a couple of things. One is and again, this is only in so much as it matters, but I'm first building for my family. I am, you know, I'm terrified, just like everyone else, about my kids, information, their pictures, their like data, all of that stuff being just out there and I don't, to be completely candid, I don't know what to do about it, because this reality that it's just like it is all just out there and I can't get my arms around it, and so, as a builder, what I try to do is first ask the question what is right by my family? What is the level of security and privacy, and what are some of the principles that we would want to put in there such that it does right by mine? And I think that's the highest standard I can give you, because, from any type of level, that's is how I think about. You know, if you want to use Milo and you're sharing and you're entrusting us with this information, how do we make sure it is secure? It is your data. It's also why Milo's a paid product.
Speaker 1:I've never, ever, wanted to have anything any doubt that there's, you know, data's being sold or your attention's being sold, or, yeah, or your like, frankly, your, your, you know through ads or any of that kind of stuff. What I ask for is actually a simpler kind of transaction, which is I make you something that's worth paying for and you pay for that, and there's lots of different stuff there, but I try to keep that part really simple and it really even stems from the beginning of like, how do we deal with your data? And then if you've tried it and you've used it, or maybe it works for some time and it's no longer for you, I want to make it the easiest because for you to then take your Google calendar and it's actually been made better or all of that information, and you can download it into like a little family handbook that you can then give to your I don't know sitter or mother-in-law or whatever. I want to make it easier, ooh.
Speaker 4:I like that. Yeah, it's what we're trying to do. I'm trying to transfer this knowledge among our village, you know, within our village.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, I would like it to be, of course, for lots of different reasons.
Speaker 1:I think we're doing something that's important and that can serve people. But if it doesn't, can we at least help every single family by creating this one place where all of this information lives that isn't women's brains, and create some kind of system that helps them, kind of make each week easier? This is also something that I feel increasingly passionate about. I think there's also responsibility on the part of the consumers to be informed consumers and to care about the people behind the product. We think about that in our physical products, but I think we need to have that same kind of thought in our digital products. It matters who's behind it. It matters who's building the stuff that we're using. We need to treat that with the gravity on one side. If we are saying that we are stressed out about the data and the privacy and all of that stuff, then it has to be matched by the diligence of understanding who is behind it and what kind of value systems and what's going into building some of these things.
Speaker 2:Let's jump to our final question for you, Avni what is a mindset shift that has helped you in working motherhood?
Speaker 1:I think that probably it's coming back to the beginning of this conversation that it's not me. It sounds like a simple one, but I think for so long and again, as a woman who is taught to go push the bounds of every educational and career kind of everything, I think I've got myself into this thing of like. Well, if I just put my efforts to it, I'm going to figure it out. This is one that I mean I certainly can and I have tried, but that's not where the magic lies, it's not where the joy lies and, honestly, it's not where the answer lies. It's not me.
Speaker 1:There are big, structural and broader things that are happening and I need help. My husband and I, our family, needs help, but that help, I think, is done in a much more of that collaborative, community kind of way. And so the mind shift if I just try harder and put my mind to it, I could do it, and that is fundamentally wrong in this. I could try all day. I mean I do like we all do, we have been, we have running. In no other part of our lives Do we run as hard as we do for so little, and I think that's the biggest thing. That's been a shift for me and I think honestly needs to be a shift for all, or like that is one of the messages I want to get out there, which is it's not you, you are never set up for success, and for us to set ourselves up for success it's going to need, you know, some important conversations, some important societal and policy and government and advocacy level stuff, but it also is investment and innovation on these problems.
Speaker 4:Avni, thank you so much for being here and having this conversation with us and sharing your wisdom. It's so cool to watch what you're building and how can we and listeners follow along as you build, milo?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, I'd love nothing more and, as I mentioned, so we'll be launching this research preview, this open kind of beta that we'd love for families to try and test and build with us, and so you can go to join Milocom for that and then for following along on the journey. You can go to our join Milo Instagram, you can follow, I suppose, on LinkedIn and yeah, I know we're just super excited to build with everyone.
Speaker 4:I think we're all eager to feel the relief and you're also helping all of us to feel seen and heard and understood and hopefully helped in the future. So thank you so much. All the links will be in the show notes, and that is it. Thank you so much, avni. Thank you.