How to Be a Successful Startup Parent

#210 — Avni Patel Thompson is the founder and CEO of Modern Village, whose mission is to “lighten the load of raising families through thoughtful, delightful and collaborative technology.” Her most recent build, Milo, is a blend of software, AI, and human supervision that does exactly that.

In this episode, Avni discusses her journey to build Milo and how she’s leveraging AI to make modern parenthood feel more manageable. She believes Milo will help promote gender equity by reducing the invisible load that falls predominantly on women. So far, it’s working. Listen to hear her describe the moment she found the missing piece that would make Milo work.

Avni talks with Sarah about her experience as a third time founder, raising pre-seed funding, the challenges that came with making money last until a product was developed, and why securing funding from day one was so important.

She also shares the difficult decisions she has had to make along the way, like scrapping an early iteration of the project and letting most of the team go so that there was more runway to find a solution that worked.

Sarah and Avni discuss:

• Avni’s goal to empower women by reducing the invisible labor of parenthood.
• Why solving the problem of the invisible load was so tricky.
• Making tough choices as a founder, and the role of honesty in decision-making.
• Leveraging the power of AI, and why it was the missing piece Avni needed to make Milo work.
• How Avni funded the different iterations of Milo and paid herself.
• Avni’s mental health journey, and how she got the support she needed to keep going.