Parenting is beautiful. It is also messy, frustrating, exhausting, funny, humbling, and constantly changing. Just when you think you have figured something out, your child changes. Or the problem changes. Or a new chapter begins.
We know because we are right there with you. We’re both dads, raising four kids across our two families, from high school to college. We’ve spent a lot of years parenting, and we still find ourselves wondering all the time: Are we handling this the right way? What should we say? Is this normal? Should we step in or back off? What do we do next?
We have read a lot of parenting books. Some of them have genuinely changed how we think about raising our kids. But even when we have read the right book for a difficult moment, remembering exactly how to respond can be challenging.
That gap between knowing and doing became one of the core ideas behind HumanUp. You can understand why your child might be acting a certain way and still have no idea what to say when they are standing in front of you. Parenting doesn’t happen on the pages of a book. It happens in kitchens and cars, at bedtime and school pickup, during rushed mornings and difficult conversations when nobody is quite at their best.
Most of these moments aren’t crises. They aren’t something you’d schedule an appointment for. They’re just real life, happening in real time, when you’re not quite sure what to say or do.
At the same time, there has never been more parenting information available to us. Google can link to hundreds of resources. Social media can produce thousands of opinions. Reddit is full of parents generously sharing what worked for their kids. Some of it can be incredibly helpful. But what worked for someone else’s child may not work for yours. They don’t know your child, your family, or the full context. We realized we didn’t need more information. We needed a better way to identify trusted knowledge and apply it to the particular child and moment in front of us.
Because parenting is not one-size-fits-all. A two-year-old is very different from a five-year-old. A thirteen-year-old is very different from a nineteen-year-old. And even thirteen-year-old twins can be completely different from each other. Every child has a different temperament, and every family has its own history, values, relationships, and dynamics. What works beautifully with one child may fall flat with another. What worked six months ago may suddenly stop working because your child has changed.
Parenting isn’t a series of generic tips. It is a relationship that unfolds over years. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we try something, see what happens, and try again. We wanted support that could work that way too: something that could understand more of the context, become more useful over time, and help with the real situation a family is facing, anytime and anywhere.
HumanUp grew out of that idea: a private, trusted place where parents can get practical guidance grounded in expert knowledge and shaped by the context of their own child and family.
What became clear was that conversation could be a much better way to deliver this kind of support. Instead of searching through information, parents could simply talk. That matters because parents don’t naturally think in search queries. We tell stories. We vent. We give context. We say, “I don’t even know if I’m explaining this right, but here’s what happened.”
And so much of parenting itself comes down to conversation. What do I say to my daughter tonight? How do I bring this up without making my son shut down? How do I hold this boundary without starting another fight? Sometimes what a parent needs isn’t another explanation of child development. It’s two or three things to keep in mind and some words that might actually help in the moment.
But the more we thought about how technology could make this kind of support possible, the more we found ourselves thinking about what we didn’t want to lose.
We didn’t want parenting guidance built from an anonymous sea of internet content. When it comes to our kids, we care where the guidance comes from. We want to know who is behind it and why we should trust them.
So we asked ourselves a very personal question: if we could assemble a team of parenting and child development experts for our own families, who would we choose?
We set the bar high. We sought out leading authors, clinicians, and researchers whose work is grounded in evidence, whose books and research have shaped their fields, and whose judgment is respected by parents and professional peers. But rather than just license their content, we wanted them involved. We wanted them to be partners.
That mattered for another reason too. Many authors and researchers have spent decades creating work that is now being absorbed into an AI world they didn’t necessarily choose. We believe those people deserve better. The people who create valuable knowledge should be recognized, respected, and fairly compensated for it. Technology should be able to extend the reach of extraordinary human expertise without erasing the humans behind it.
One by one, twelve leading experts agreed to build HumanUp with us. We are enormously proud of the founding expert team we’ve assembled, not just because of their credentials, but because they are people we genuinely trust. Supporting children and families is their life’s work, and that shared mission makes the partnership feel so natural: helping their wisdom and experience reach as many parents as possible, in the moments they need it most.
Working with them also helped clarify a larger belief we have about AI.
There is a lot of conversation about what AI will replace. We find ourselves more interested in what it can strengthen.
AI can help a parent understand what might be happening. It can bring forward the right piece of expert guidance at the right time. It can help someone prepare for a difficult conversation or find better words. But it cannot be the parent. No technology can take the place of a parent in their child’s life, and no technology should try.
We want HumanUp to help parents be more confident and capable in that role, not outsource that role. And as technology becomes more capable, we think the distinction matters. The more abundant information and intelligence become, the more valuable human judgment, trust, and connection become. That’s why we want to use AI to strengthen parents’ judgment, confidence, and connection with their children.
That same emphasis on trust shaped another decision we made early. Parents need somewhere they can be completely candid. Parenting can bring up things we don’t necessarily want to post publicly, ask in a group, or even say to another person face-to-face. Sometimes we’re worried. Sometimes we’re embarrassed. Sometimes we’re frustrated with our kids. Sometimes we think we handled something badly and just want help figuring out what to do next.
We designed HumanUp to be a place where parents could say what is really going on without feeling ashamed or judged. Privacy has mattered to us from the beginning. We wanted to build something we would feel comfortable using with information about our own children and families, including the questions we might hesitate to ask anywhere else.
All of these choices come from the same place. We want to build HumanUp in a way we can feel good about as parents ourselves. That commitment is also why we chose to make HumanUp a Public Benefit Corporation. We want HumanUp to become a strong, enduring company, but we also want its success to create more opportunities to serve families and communities, including families who might not otherwise have access to this kind of support. We are still early and still figuring out what that will look like, but the commitment matters to us.
We don’t know exactly what it will mean to be human in a world of increasingly capable AI.
But we know children will still need parents. Parents will still worry, wonder, make mistakes, learn, try again, and love their kids fiercely. We will still look to people we trust when it comes to parenting. And the relationship between a parent and a child will still be one of the most important and precious relationships in our lives.
We built HumanUp because we believe technology can serve those things rather than compete with them. It can make extraordinary human wisdom more accessible. It can help us find the right guidance for the child and moment in front of us. And, at its best, it can help us be a little more confident, thoughtful, and present with the people who matter most.
That’s the kind of parenting support we want for our own families, and what we hope HumanUp can offer yours.
If that resonates with you, we hope you’ll give HumanUp a try. And we hope you’ll tell us what helps, what doesn’t, and how we can serve you better.
With gratitude,
Brad JeffersonCo-founder, HumanUp
Jason HsiaoCo-founder, HumanUp