Daddy’s Digest was excited to interview Michael Perry, an ex-Shopify exec who struggled with infertility. Once able to conceive through IVF, he realized how unequal the balance once between man and women, core caregiver and secondary caregiver. He decided to quit Shopify to create a solution.
1. There must be a good story here. What’s the story behind the app?
I have always been drawn to any opportunity that could help make life easier for people, and there is no better vehicle for this than software. Growing up working in various family businesses, at an early age I became deeply passionate and inspired to serve entrepreneurs. This dream manifested into reality when I started Kit in 2013. Shortly thereafter, the company I built was bought by Shopify, and I had the opportunity to learn and grow within their ecosystem of incredible business leaders and peers.
However, it took my wife and I struggling with infertility to realize all of the acclaim and the accomplishments I had dreamed of and earned professionally seemed so meaningless. The most important thing to me was growing a family. The day my first son was born in 2019, I instantly realized that my family was my actual life’s work, and the passion I once had to make life easier for small business owners shifted to making life easier at home.
Then I became a dad…
Shortly after becoming a dad, I realized that society had “naturally” created a system that put “caregiving” and “managing a home” on moms’ shoulders. I assumed asking my wife what she needed me to do was enough, that I was helping, but in reality I was out of touch with our home’s most basic needs and felt useless, seeing the weight of her stress from taking it all on. I soon found that this was a major issue plaguing most families across the country and the world.
This is when I became inspired to create Maple, a platform with the goal of improving the quality of life for families by providing better visibility, communication, accountability, and automation for households.
2. Tell us about why you think it’s important that dads tell this story?
I think a lot of dads are in the same boat I was, where I thought, “I’m more than willing to do whatever my wife asks,” without realizing how that puts the burden on our partners to have to actively consider everything that needs to get done in the house and distribute the workload.
It’s time for dads to step up and take responsibility for caretaking outside of typical gender roles.
During COVID, from February 2020 to March 2021, nearly 1.1 million women dropped out of the workforce — with the rate of unemployment even higher for women with children. In that same time span, there were almost 1.4 million fewer moms of school-aged children actively working than the prior year.
3. What’s one thing you’ve learned about planning for your family that you’d like to share with our audience?
It’s a ton of work, and participating in planning for the home has made me even more grateful for my own wife— and more empathetic for all parents who are trying to do their best to plan and care for their kids.
4. What are 3 words you think your kids would use to describe you? How do you feel about those words?
My kids are only three and one years old, so I can only say what I hope they see in me. I would like for them to know me as loving, passionate, and grateful, and in turn— live their own lives with those principles.
5. What’s one memory or tradition from your family (parents) that you hope happens in your family?
Honestly, for me it is the simple things. I am thankful how my parents kept “family first” the constant focus. I never, ever, thought family wasn’t the top priority- and I hope to instill that in my kids as well. Nothing, or no one, comes before protecting, loving and caring for your family.
6. Tell us what Canadian families can expect from the app?
Similar to the tools people use to run a business, Maple applies the same principle to the family, building a platform that eases the burden of parenting. Maple makes it easier for parents to collaborate asynchronously and evenly distribute work.
With the launch of Maple Browser today, Canadian families can search and discover “ready made plans,” filled with notes, to-dos, and calendar events, that can be downloaded and used by anyone in seconds. Whether you are trying to get your kid to sleep through the night, transition them to solids, plan for back to school–there are ready made plans that will save families hours of planning.
