When I went through YC, I was 6 months pregnant with my second kid. I didn’t have the option of “not mentioning it.” I walked in as a 40-year-old child psychologist in a sea of young engineers. A mom with a 5-year-old at home, flying DC to SF every week. I looked (and initially felt) exactly as out of place as I was. My clearest memory of interview day isn’t the YC partners. It’s the Halloween makeup instructions I left my husband. For a long time I introduced myself like an apology: the Silicon Valley outsider, the clinician, the mom. I don’t anymore. I wasn’t there in spite of being a mom and a psychologist. I was there because of it. I had just spent twenty years with the actual user while everyone else was still trying to figure theirs out. My daughter’s struggle learning to read is the reason Ello exists. We didn’t start by asking what AI could do. We started by asking what kids actually needed. Yes, the time math is brutal. But kids also answered the only question that matters: what is the time for? Six years in, being parents is a win for the company. A lot of us at Ello have kids. We also work insanely hard. It brings a purpose you can’t fake. I wanted to share this for anyone reading from an unconventional background who looks at the norm, and quietly decides startups aren’t for them. They are exactly for you.