Theo: No doubt, you’ll hear stories from your mom and dad about the day you were born and what the world was like on that day. But I thought I’d do the same right now, just days after your birth.
Your Birth
Your mom and dad went to the hospital the day before your birth, because she was experiencing enough early signs of labor that they decided to let the medical professionals check on your status and readiness to enter your new world. But it was still too early, so they went home to try and relax, and wait for you to make your next move.
In the middle of that same night, technically early the next morning of October 22, your mom started really going into labor. So they want to the hospital again. At 5:23 am, Mimi and I happened to wake up and decided to send a text message to them, asking how things were progressing. To our big surprise, and excitement, your dad replied just a couple of minutes later saying that you were born at 5:24 am and that both you and your mom were doing great. You must have woken us up by sending us your brain waves to let us know you were anxious to meet us!
We later learned that you weighed 7 lbs 12 oz at birth, which is very close to your brother Grayson’s birth weight (7 lbs 14 oz).
On the day before your birth, your Mimi was at our beach house in Galveston with her girlfriends. When she got the news from your mom that she was showing early signs of labor, she decided to return to Austin with her friends instead of staying there and waiting for me to drive down later in the day. It is a good thing that she returned, because we both were able to see you at the hospital the next day. We both got to hold you, while your mom and dad ate their lunch. That was a great treat. You never cried or fussed. Instead, you were very relaxed and comfortable in your new environment.
Your Parents
Your parents both work for high tech companies, your mom in marketing and your dad in finance. Both are really good at what they do. They live in the same Pflugerville Texas house that they owned when Grayson was born. It is a big enough house for you to have your own bedroom.
I’m sure you and your brother will have lots of fun playing together in your upstairs bedrooms and the nearby playroom at the top of the stairs. I can already hear the noise of your activities and your parents repeatedly telling you two to be careful and not hurt yourselves. I can predict that you’ll quiet down and calm down for about 1 minute before resuming your “boys play”. And since your mom is going to read this blog post soon, I will also encourage you two to be careful and not hurt yourselves.
Your Cousins
Olivia is now 10 years old and Harper is 6 years old. They live just 3 blocks away from you in the same neighborhood. They are both in elementary school, which is also very close to your house. Depending on when you go to first grade there, it is possible that Grayson will be in the fifth grade at the same school. You could walk to school together and he could show you around on your first day or two. And even if he is already in middle school by then, it is right next door to the elementary school. Isn’t that great?
Your Grandparents Mimi and Grandpa
I am only 10 days away from turning 60 years old as I write this. So it will be easy for me to remember your age as long as I live. I will just subtract 60 from my age.
Your Mimi and I spend most of our time in Austin, at our house on Rockcrest Drive. But every month we spend about 10 days at our Galveston beach house, which we call the Surf Shack. We can’t wait to show you the beach and the ocean. Our whole family now has experts at making sandcastles, and I’m sure they’re going to show you the tricks they’ve learned.
I’ll warn you now that your Mimi is going to be anxious to teach you how to boogie board and surf on a surfboard. We even just bought a brand new surfboard at a fundraising auction at the Texas Surf Museum. I’m pretty sure your Mimi has visions of you and your cousins surfing on that board.
Speaking of the Texas Surf Museum, your Mimi joined the non-profit’s board of directors more than a year before it opened, and she became President on the day that it officially opened. Her mission as the President is to continue to build amazing exhibits and experiences for Galveston visitors that want to learn about the history of surfing in Texas. You’ll soon learn that, after her daughters and grandchildren, her next big passion is surfing. But I’ll let her tell you all her amazing stories about that.
I spend most of my time helping tech startup founders build great companies. I’m always working closely with a handful of startups and always more casually helping hundreds more. The organization I co-founded, called Capital Factory, has been the most active early stage tech investors in Texas for about 10 years now. We have helped lots and lots of startups. When you’re a little older, you will certainly hear me tell stories about the most exciting Texas startups and the most amazing new technology innovations.
When your Mimi and I aren’t in Austin or Galveston, it means we are traveling the world. We are both healthy and have saved our money for many years so that we can see the world together and have amazing experiences. I believe I can rightfully boast that we are now professional vacation travelers, and we love traveling together.
The World Around You
Every child is born at an interesting time, for a whole variety of reasons. And that’s not different for you.
I won’t say a lot about things related to politics, but that’s mostly because our society has evolved over the last several years in a way that somehow makes it hard to talk openly about one’s political beliefs and opinions. Enough people have moved from what is considered the “center” of the political spectrum to the extremes, that it has become polarizing in a way that I’m fairly nervous about.
But our country has been in times of turmoil like this many times in our 250 year history, and somehow we have found a collective way out of it. I’m hoping that will happen again soon enough for you to not be impacted by it as an adolescent or young adult.
The pace of technology evolution is so much faster than just 10 years ago, that I can’t really describe it. That pace will be normal to you and your cousins, but to us adults it seems like light speed.
I’m both super-excited but also worried about the newest technologies that are being introduced into society. My big hope is that they are used at least 70% of the time for good. I realize that means 30% of their use would be for negative (bad) things. But there are always good-versus-bad tradeoffs with new technologies.
In this case, artificial intelligence (AI) is right at the forefront of the current technology revolution. Your family members will tell you that I’m deep, deep into it in a variety of ways. Every startup I work with is aggressively using AI to do amazing things. One is building the world’s first diagnostic for mental health disorders, using a regular cell phone camera. Another is building one of the world best humanoid robots. Things like that, and many many more, will be so commonplace by the time you’re five or six years old, that it won’t really amaze you. It will just be your normal.
My Hopes and My Promise
These new technologies will change the way kids are educated and the way adults earn a living. So much so that I’m pretty sure your education experience after high school and your professional work situation will be extremely different than that of your parents. And I’m fairly certain it will be much better in a variety of ways. But the path from now to then will probably be quite bumpy.
Because of the ways our world will change over the next 20 years, my plan is to help you and your cousins learn how to do a bunch of different things. I want to help you understand how things we use work, how to make and repair things, how to ask amazing questions about anything you’d like to know, and how to use your creativity and imagination to accomplish anything you are personally passionate about.
Your generation is going to do amazing things for society and the world we live in. And I want to help you do that in whatever ways you are interested. But my biggest promise is to do my best to listen when you speak to me, so that I can use all my years and all my wisdom to help guide you, when you request.
Love,
Grandpa
Gordon Daugherty 