Building Tech for the Moments Between Therapy Sessions

Monisha Saldanha (00:00) Welcome to Colorado Tech People, the podcast where we talk with founders and leaders using technology to solve real-world problems. Today I'm joined by Matthias Grant, creator of Super Proud, an app born from his family's own experience navigating the challenges of finding effective mental health support for a child. After seeing how a simple reward system helped his daughter practice difficult but important behaviors.

Matthias began asking whether technology could make that same approach easier for families to use consistently at home. We'll talk about turning a deeply personal experience into a product, what he learned navigating children's mental health services, the realities of building a company alongside a full time job, and what would it have to be true for Super Proud to become his full time pursuit? Welcome, Matthias. Thank you for joining us today.

Mathias Gran (00:55) Thank you, Monisha Good to be here.

Monisha Saldanha (00:55) Before we start

about Before we talk about your current entrepreneurial act endeavor, would you like to tell us about how you got into entrepreneurship?

Mathias Gran (01:07) Yes, so most of my adult life has been either in as a as a professional in a high growth startup or running my own business. And it all started as an undergrad at the University of Iowa. And I was hired to assemble computers, high-end gaming computers, from the an ad in the local student job board. And I went to my interview and found out that the company only had $400 and

Essentially at ten dollars an hour, they would be bankrupt within one week of paying me. So I happened to be getting a certificate in entrepreneurship at that time and there was an excellent set of resources on campus at the University of Iowa. And so I decided to partner with this person who was hiring me, who is also an engineering undergrad student, and we decided to pivot the business and look at the business model and adjust. So after putting together a business plan, we actually won

The student undergraduate business plan competition that year and joined the on-campus incubator and ended up running what turned out to be a Geek Squad competitor for in two college towns for about three years. And that was an amazing experience. And I think every entrepreneur who's ever been one knows that no matter how the story ends, once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. So for the rest of my career, I've always tried to find opportunities in startups and other high-growth organizations because.

That energy, that drive, that passion that leads to great outcomes for for startups, can never really leave your body once once you've lived it in the chair of CEO.

Monisha Saldanha (02:43) Fantastic. And what a great story about how you got into entrepreneurship. let's start with

Mathias Gran (02:49) Yeah, thank you.

Monisha Saldanha (02:49) today's endeavor. So let's start with the problem. What is Super Proud? Who is it designed for? And what problem are you trying to solve?

Mathias Gran (03:00) Yeah,

this is great. So as an entrepreneur student and a practicing entrepreneur, you know that the most important thing to discover is product market fit or really focus on who has the pain and how are you going to solve that pain. So SuperProud is a therapy adjacent product using the token economy or token-based rewards to essentially help you, the adult, support your child who's going through something really challenging emotionally.

These are often in simpler terms referred to as sticker charts, but the real thing that I experienced as a parent is in having a child that had to go through a hard growth period is that the role of the parent is so, so important to the growth of the child. And so I needed a tool to help me pay attention to the safe but sometimes scary challenges that my daughter was taking on when she was in crisis so that I could provide safe and consistent support for her and actually be part of her growth journey.

rather than just sitting on the sidelines. So Super Proud is invented to help the adults pay attention to the safe but scary things that children are doing and reward them and show them that it's safe to take risks and that we're paying attention and that we have their back. So it's a little app that supports the growth plan that your little needs. Our tagline is help your littles do enormous things, because that's really what it's all about. And we call it Super Proud because that's how you feel when you see a little kid

Try on something hard and then grow from.

Monisha Saldanha (04:29) And is Super Proud meant to be only for children who have mental health crises, or is it could it be for any parent who's trying to change or help, you know, support good behavior for their children?

Mathias Gran (04:45) Yeah, great question. It can absolutely fit into a behavior plan at home. And we think that that's one of the segments that will respond to this app. We I think though it's important to remember the real pain when you're trying to solve something in the marketplace has has to be deep, visceral, and in your top three. And so for me, as as a parent of a child surviving a mental health crisis, it became our number one issue. And so we want to try to meet those parents as well.

You can absolutely use this to help develop your children and align to values in the household. And we could we have so many great stories to talk about that strategy as well. So if you're just a well-intentioned parent who wants that practice of paying attention to the great things your kids are doing, that absolutely fits in your life. And the app can be self-led. It can also be practitioner-led and professionally led. So that's where we see what I call the precipitating event.

Or w that's when we see, you know, that the parent realizes that there's this challenge and that they're committed to solving that for their kid. These are the families that would respond really, really well to the level of intimate support that we can provide in addition to this tech tool.

Monisha Saldanha (05:54) The origin story is deeply personal for you. Can you take us back to what your family was experiencing when your daughter was six and you first realized that mental health support available to you wasn't meeting what your family actually needed?

Mathias Gran (06:09) Yeah, and I I just for the record I do have permission from my daughter to talk about this. it's been uncomfortable to try to figure out like how can I speak vaguely about it, but also deeply. So I did ask permission and and she said yes, go for it. So when my daughter was in kindergarten, she went to school with a tummy ache and this was in COVID times and so they were mas masked up still. And she ended up throwing up at school in her mask, and she had never really had

That happened before. She didn't know how her body's senses were signaling to her. And she felt very embarrassed. And when we tried to get her back into the classroom, she had a lot of reluctance. The failure and success of support, spiders out from here. I think in school we didn't have a lot of support. The the answer from the school psychologist was very simply the best place for her is in the classroom, get her back in the classroom and walk away.

But in real life, when I would drop off this tiny soul at school in the morning, there's she just had terror on her face. And any observant parent can read that sign from your kid, and it's heartbreaking. You do not want to drop your child off to a situation that is terrifying them. So through the the support of a local pediatric mental health professional, she successfully diagnosed my daughter's challenge as a traumatic response to this to this situation.

From there, it went beyond just fear of being in school and it very quickly spiraled into an eating disorder known as ARFID, which is a avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, A-R-F-I-D. That is a new to the DSM in the last last round of publication, new diagnosis. It is a non-body image related eating disorder, and it's a phobic-based eating disorder. And so she didn't want to eat anything that might give her a tummy ache because that experience was so traumatic for her.

Likewise, and we and our our psychologist helped us understand this, food is everywhere. And so you quickly end up seeing eating disorders show up if you're just unsettled and and fearful and anxious anyway, because food is always present. From there, OCD showed up. This was all within 60 to 90 days of this event at school, and she ended up losing a ton of weight, was only eating Target brand granola with you know bananas and chocolate chips.

She would only wear one pair of shoes, or sorry, one pair of socks, silver dollar holes in the bottom, no toes by the end of it, wouldn't rare wear a skirt that had a wrinkle in it, wouldn't wear a shirt with a wrinkle, wouldn't go to bed if the comforter was the one that was on her bed the day that she threw up. So just this deep, deep, deep spiral for a tiny, tiny little heart and soul. and so part of this story, and and I'm sorry I'm so verbose, but it's very personal.

so far our first step was to just I would sit with her at school. I would take her into school and I would sit down and we would do exposure therapy together. And I would have a string and a pile of beads and I would say, If you can go sit in your chair for one minute, you get a bead and she'd go sit for a minute and come back. If you can go sit in your chair for two minutes, you'll get a bead. And so we would do and put these beads on and make jewelry out of them and try to condition her that's like, Hey, the room isn't scary.

But beyond that, she continued to lose weight, she continued to be aversive to school, aversive to food, and it got really bad fast. to the point that her growth chart at the pediatrician's office had a giant dip in it. And on her next visit, once she recovered, they said, Hey, that we probably have a data error. We probably gotta clean that up and look at the record. And we No, no, there's no error there. Don't you remember

Monisha Saldanha (09:53) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (09:55) how bad this was for her? So in in this in this growing

growing problem, and we had great support from this professional through our pediatrician, which was wonderful. But the treatment plan really revolved around getting a team of five different professionals together and going for one hour a week to five different types of therapy. And you just see a little kid whose vocabulary is very limited, who's who's just full of fear and anxiety, and you're like, I don't think five hours with five strangers a week is gonna turn this around.

So we ended up finding an outpatient program in Dallas and moved to Dallas for a month. And she did an amazing job and had a hundred percent turnaround. She's very mature about it. She says, I know I'll always have RFID, it's just a part of me, but I have coping skills now and can manage it. So this is this is where we realized that we need something more than what Denver can offer. Unfortunately, Children's

Monisha Saldanha (10:49) Yeah.

Mathias Gran (10:50) Hospital was focused on teenage audience.

Putting a six-year-old at the same floor as bulimics and anorexics probably wasn't the right fit. So this all came out of the need to find the way that we can support her best, knowing that what was on offer wasn't really what she needed at the time.

Monisha Saldanha (11:10) That's just an incredible story. and what resilience you showed as a family to figure it all out. You know, that's a lot a lot on you to figure out what was the right care plan for your daughter. And you mentioned you ultimately found

Mathias Gran (11:22) But you know, I thank you. Yeah.

Monisha Saldanha (11:25) yeah, you're welcome. You ultimately found an outpatient program in Dallas, like you mentioned that was effective. what was different about that treatment experience compared with the support you'd been able to find here in Denver?

Mathias Gran (11:40) Yeah, I think I think the when you understand phobic challenges from the psychological lens, exposure therapy is the most efficacious. That is such a fun word to say, efficacious. Exposure therapy is the most efficacious way to confront it. And you have to do that thoughtfully because it's sort of like the the three bears, you know, the porch is too hot, the porch is too cold. You need to have enough challenge that your body's responding.

And

so it's giving you a little bit of that fear response, but not so much that it topples you over. And in practicing these small dose exposures, you allow your body to regulate and come back to ground and center. And so what was helpful about Dallas was we had a multimodal therapeutic session or setting. It wasn't a hospital, but there was art therapy, there was a you know a therapy dog, there was family therapy, dietitians.

anything you could possibly think to to throw at a kid was there. And all day, every day, she had thoughtful supervision by professionals and it was all about normalizing the fact that every other kid in this cohort is struggling like you and that We're going to take these small risks together and we're going to celebrate. So one the the the the the the centerpiece of this treatment plan was this chart.

it was like a sticker chart, but they had it on a on a clipboard. And there were nine, there was a grid of nine things. And I I I feel so silly because I didn't take a picture of it. I don't remember what the nine things were, but it came from book. It's all research-based. And if if she did seven of the nine things in the morning, then she got like infinite screen time in the afternoon. If she did seven of the nine things in the afternoon, she got infinite screen time in the morning. And so There was this constant cycle of risk,

support, reward, risk, support, reward, challenge, support, reward. And when we left Dallas, their instructions were, you know, just keep doing this. Just take the program home with you. And the minute we landed in Denver, we realized this wasn't going work because we don't

Monisha Saldanha (13:49) Yeah.

Mathias Gran (13:50) live in a hospital. And it's not reasonable for us to expect a public school teacher to integrate this plan into her schedule. So we we needed to find something that

captured the spirit of that treatment plan and our role in it while being more practical for the at-home, at home experience. So that's how Super Proud was born is I need you to take one bite of a strawberry. And that sounds terrifying to someone with ARFID. you know, and it's it sounds delicious to to those of us that aren't suffering, right? Just have a bite of a strawberry. But that challenge bite was one of her s one of her nine squares. Just try a food. One of her challenge bites was.

eat an Oreo. You know, These things don't sound overwhelmingly complex or hard. And I think that perfectly captures the spirit of Super Proud. Whatever your kid needs is the right thing right now. And we can adjust. But Let's have that strawberry together. Let's eat an Oreo together. Let's show you that it's okay and I'm gonna be there for you. And that slowly builds her confidence and let her recover. And she's doing great. She's her growth chart is back on. She wears all sorts of clothes. Her

She

doesn't really have OCD. She has a little bit of little bit of anxiety here and there, but you know, food isn't an issue. And it's just, you know, it's all you want. It's all you want as a parent of a struggling kid.

Monisha Saldanha (15:13) Yeah, I love I love a happy ending. when did when did you

Mathias Gran (15:16) Yeah. It worked out for her.

Monisha Saldanha (15:18) make yeah, it's great. When did you make the leap from this worked for our family to I wonder if I could build a product that helps other families do this?

Mathias Gran (15:29) Yeah, to To me as an entrepreneur is obvious. Like, you know,

Monisha Saldanha (15:32) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (15:32) I I know that I'm having this d deep intense problem. I know that feeling and and living this way means that there has to be a bespoke solution for the kiddo. And that was reinforced through the program in Dallas. It was reinforced from our local resources. And so it just was obvious to me in my head that hey, If I can make something that's easy for me to follow.

I know there are other families out there. It doesn't just have to be RFID. It can be, I have a family on the platform with an autistic son. And he wrote me, he's like, feel free to publish this. He wrote me four different versions of a blog post about how he used Super Proud to help his ten-year-old autistic kid spend a week in Italy. the same child who cannot sit at the dinner table for more than seven minutes and struggles with outbursts was able to successfully navigate

a a cross continental vacation for a whole week just by setting up these small attainable goals and supporting the hell out of the kid for for taking on those challenges. And so I mean that's that's life-changing stuff. seeing your kid recover from eating disorder, life changing. taking your kid on family vacation who who you don't even think is possible, that's life changing. And so to me, I just experiencing the struggle as a parent and and seeing how this this platform worked.

I'm like, I just want to bring it to more people. I just want to help other kiddos out there. I want to help other parents because it is life changing and I wanna be a part of that.

Monisha Saldanha (17:02) A sticker chart is deliberately simple. Why build an app around it rather than just telling parents to put a chart on the refrigerator? What does technology make possible that paper doesn't?

Mathias Gran (17:13) Great question. I think the obvious one is it is not portable. And one of the greatest things that you get from Super Proud is a whole common language and expectations, such that if you go out to dinner as a family and let's say that you care about manners, you know, dining habits in your household, if that's a value to you, you can give spot recognition right there at the outing. And the app is is sort of make

Bright and colorful and made for it to be fun for the kid. They don't even have to be able to read. If you tap on the you know use good manners behavior, a little thumbs up shows up and it gives you like a nice little affirmation message. So that there's just enough of the gamification tools that exist to bring a little excitement to these normal interactions. And it just reinforces that anytime you're paying attention to your kid.

You they make you proud so often and we just don't take the moment to fully reward and and appreciate them for doing that. So that's the biggest advantage over a paper or a physical system is that it's always with you. I think on the flip side, the downside of a digital system is that it's not always in front of you. And so there are advantages to having physical boards. And what Super Proud did to address that was every behavior you enter in the system, you can print out a QR code.

So for hygiene, hand washing after school, we just have a QR code on our mirror in our bathroom. And so when our kids get home from school, they borrow our phone and wash the hands and scan it right then and there. And so there's a way we're kind of being we're towing in and out of the physical world and giving you the best of both. There's no reason why you can't have a sticker chart. Have both, but just

make sure it's consistent.

Monisha Saldanha (18:59) The product emphasizes adding points rather than taking them away. Why was it important to design around positive reinforcement rather than punishment or losing rewards?

Mathias Gran (19:10) yeah, this was just a very obvious real world experience. So from very early on, before we called it Super Proud, we had a similar system in place called Big Brother Points. When when my daughter was born, my her older brother really wanted to be participant in in her in her babyhood. So we had,

Monisha Saldanha (19:32) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (19:33) you know, like take a diaper to the diaper pail or

You know, tickle her toes. We had like little fun little things to help my son engage with my daughter when she was little. And at one point, my son was being a little shit, as they often are. And

Monisha Saldanha (19:47) Ha ha ha.

Mathias Gran (19:48) we said, we gotta take away some big brother points. And he just lost it. It was one of those moments that was obvious that the trust that we were building was immediately being destroyed. So from that point forward, we knew that.

Nothing this child can do can take away from the great thing that they did. And we need to keep the focus there on the great thing because we're gonna have rough spots. I'm gonna be a really not great dad. they're going to make decisions that are really poor sometimes. But that shouldn't ever take away from all of the stuff we see every day that's super in line and and developmental for them. So that's where that came from is the the the sheer the emotional

burden that I or the the emotional impact that I had on on my son when I took away points. It's like we'll never do that again. it was

Monisha Saldanha (20:39) Mm.

Mathias Gran (20:39) actually a ping pong jar. We had a big jar that you put ping pong balls in. because it was very visual and tactile and it

Monisha Saldanha (20:41) No. Yeah.

Mathias Gran (20:45) was colorful and we had it on the shelf and we got like 500 ping pong balls for seven dollars on Amazon. So we just like filled up the bucket and when the bucket was full you got a nice, a fun little prize. But I took ping pong balls out and it was just it just destroyed him. So we learned from that lesson.

Never

take never take away. Nothing you can do will take away from the great things you did.

Monisha Saldanha (21:08) Yes. You describe behaviors that can be aligned with a parent led or practitioner led growth plan. Where do you see the boundary between super proud as a parenting tool and technology that supports professional behavioral or mental health care?

Mathias Gran (21:26) I don't think there really is a a delineation. I think in practice, when when I look at Super Proud families and and what they're doing, it's integration. And that's what you want. So there were times when my son needed more attention and more thoughtful intervention at school. Why wouldn't you have your school psychologist, interventionist, or teacher participate in Super Proud if that's what's agreed upon? So for us at the time, we had a little quarter sheet.

That we would he would it was called check-in checkout, where the teacher would sort of evaluate, are you ready for this section of class? And then how are you transitioning out of this section of class? And we he would get five stars in each section, up to five stars, and then we would give him super proud points at home when he got home. So I think integration is essential because you want common language, you want consistency, you don't want the kid to have to do different things at school than at home.

you want to know what the school intervention plan is and integrate that into your home life as well. So so yeah, I think I think the line is as faint as you want it to be. And I think it's essential as a therapeutic adjacent product to integrate with your child psychologist as well. Because as a consumer of that product, I found that I would get about 45 minutes of fun time with the counselor with the kiddo, and then I'd get like three minutes at the end.

I

would say like, we're gonna work on calm voices this week. And that's $150. Thank you very much. So I think that there's a huge opportunity here to have the the the parent between visits support the goals of the therapeutic environment as well.

Monisha Saldanha (23:08) Your family had the ability to relocate temporarily to access treatment that worked. What did that experience teach you about how uneven access to effective children's mental health support can be?

Mathias Gran (23:24) This is a absolute truth, absolute reality. we were privileged enough to be able to pay double mortgage plus travel and live in a different city for a month. Insurance covered the hospital. their team had relationships with the insurance company, and so they were able to make sure that this treatment was necessary and and proven to be effective. And so they did their work to make it easier on us, but it doesn't change the fact that we had, you know, it

At least a double month's worth of expenses. So access is a big issue. Right now, Super Proud doesn't have grant sponsorship or or public-private partnerships established, but I think that's the road forward. If we want to try to reach communities with less access, I think there are some non-dilutive funding options out there and and grant programs to help get tools like this into other households. And those families are.

just as deserving, if not more deserving, than anyone else. So I I I'm in the uncomfortable position of offering a paid

Monisha Saldanha (24:27) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (24:28) service that definitely skews towards people that can choose to pay for it. but my heart is a hundred percent open to helping any family that that wants to grow.

Monisha Saldanha (24:41) And one interesting aspect of Super Proud is that it may actually train the adult as much as the child, teaching parents to notice and celebrate positive behavior consistently. Was that something you understood from the beginning or something you discovered by using it?

Mathias Gran (24:57) can it be both? I think it has to be both. So

Monisha Saldanha (25:00) Yeah, sure.

Mathias Gran (25:01) yeah. So when we were in Dallas, we had I don't know if it was every day or every other day, but we had very frequent family counseling. And even if there wasn't intentional programming in those sessions, it it was just really nice to have the counselor just sort of pause our life and say, How are you doing? You know, how's this going for you? Because your kid's doing great.

her recovery is amazing and she's doing fine, but how are you guys? This is a lot to take on. so I think those moments helped us recognize how important it was for us to be a participant, an active participant in the growth, but also know like recognize in ourselves where where we had gaps. So for me, and I still struggle with this at times, is just taking the moment to notice.

And for little kids in in the mom blog world, this is called special time. And it can only be it doesn't have to be long, it just has to be five minutes. But it it's non-instructional. It's just being present and observing. And I remember when I was being taught about special time, both through our psychologist and the program, it was like, it's it they're like, just notice. And I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, what is your child doing right now? I'm

Monisha Saldanha (26:17) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (26:20) like, she's playing with.

Purler beads and making a design. I'm like, and they're like, great. So all you need to to do is just notice what color she's picking up. Like, where's that teal one gonna go? And how does that

Monisha Saldanha (26:32) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (26:33) fit with your blue? And just these little things that's open and and observant actually are what build connection. So it's training us to be what they need from us, and it's showing them that we care and we're paying attention. And so it's it's a win-win.

Monisha Saldanha (26:53) Families use Super Proud in ways you didn't initially anticipate? And what have those users taught you about the problem you're really solving?

Mathias Gran (27:03) I think my favorite surprise from Super Proud is that almost immediately the adults ask if they can be if they can get points too. And I think this is a fun thing. Of course, you can do it now in the app. It's just we call them kiddos in the app, but you can make your own kiddo. But there's something about like, hey, I could really use this. Like I want someone to notice what when I'm in bounds or out of bounds, there's something magical about child accountability towards adults.

That is very exciting and engaging for them. So that that one definitely surprised me that adults want to track points as well. And they want their kids to be the referee. They want their kids to notice their behaviors. And I think that's very sweet. I 100% support it. My kids point out everything I do wrong, and every now and then they'll point out what I'm doing right. And so I think it's a good practice we could

Monisha Saldanha (27:54) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (27:55) adopt.

Monisha Saldanha (27:58) You're building super proud while maintaining a substantial professional career. We sometimes romanticize the idea of becoming a solopreneur and being your own boss, but in reality you're suddenly responsible for product, engineering, marketing, sales, finance, support, and everything else. What parts of running the business do you love? And what has made you question the solopreneur fantasy?

Mathias Gran (28:23) this is such a hard question.

Monisha Saldanha (28:25) This is

Mathias Gran (28:25) what do I love and what makes me question it? I I think entrepreneurs have to first and foremost be creators. I think that's a common thread that we have in our genes. We we we dream things that don't exist and then they exist. Like that is the magic of being in being your own, being an entrepreneur. We can create something from nothing. Our dreams literally appear in front of us.

I can't tell you how proud it made me feel when my app was approved in the app store. That was like a huge milestone, you know?

Monisha Saldanha (28:58) Yeah.

Mathias Gran (28:58) Like, wow, anyone can actually use this now. So I think what I love about it is creative, is the creativity. And it doesn't

Monisha Saldanha (29:06) Yes.

Mathias Gran (29:07) even have to be innovative. It just has to be like I am making something. My ideas are turning into something tangible, and that's addictive. in terms of what isn't so glamorous.

I mean, I don't I I think this is part of just a personality trait in my own neuroses. But I

Monisha Saldanha (29:26) Mm.

Mathias Gran (29:26) really struggle with every day I wake up with a to-do list that's impossible. And some smarty pants on the internet would say, like, that's just called motivation. You know, like that's ambition.

Monisha Saldanha (29:38) Mm.

Mathias Gran (29:40) but I think for me it feels very heavy because as much as I love creating things, I also really like accomplishing things.

And to every day have to say no to things that are very exciting and interesting to you is it hurts me. And so that's what I struggle with the most. Running the business I've always liked. my mom bought me an antique cash register when I was a kid. I had a paper route and so I had like a hundred and fifty dollars in cash. And as a kid, that's a lot. And I would count it and I would look, you know, memorize some of the serial numbers. Like I was always very commerce

Monisha Saldanha (30:14) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (30:14) oriented as a kid.

Because I honestly wanted to buy a Nintendo. Like that's where that's really where all this came from. My entrepreneur's origin story is not in college. It's actually wanting to buy a Nintendo. but I'm I'm down with accounting and I love paying people that are helping me and and I love writing checks and putting stamps on envelopes. That stuff is the proof that we've done something. So I don't mind the administrative overhead of it. but I don't like that every day we're not there yet.

I just want to be there someday. And that's it, that's one of the struggles of an entrepreneur. Is like we're never really there. And you have to put just enough out there. It has to be good enough that it can exist. But it those perfectionists that are listening, y'all got to give that up. That is that is the other Achilles heel of mine. Is is it ready yet? Is it good enough yet? It's like just put it out there. And in this book behind me, Dare to Lead, I'm teaching from this at du right now. And one of one of

the the things that she talks about in here is is SFD, your shitty first draft, and how this is

Monisha Saldanha (31:21) Mm.

Mathias Gran (31:21) the antidote to perfectionism is like, just get it out there. Just get a draft, get whatever it is, get a V1 and get some feedback. Because I could sit here and have a blast writing software for weeks that doesn't actually solve the problem.

Monisha Saldanha (31:41) what is the business model for Super Proud today? And who do you ultimately think should pay for it? Parents, clinicians, healthcare organizations, employers, or some combination of those?

Mathias Gran (31:54) Yeah, so there are multiple revenue streams to Super Proud. And I think you will we will have the the parent-led audience for sure. I think we we can market to them directly and and drum up some excitement around their pain, which is, you know, how do I how do I bring some connection? How do I build trust and connection with my kiddos in a really safe way? How do I bring some structure to the chaos of my household? So there's definitely a clear winning segment there. And

And then there's sort of a middle segment between the app and the practitioner where I've seen this in in my early adopters. Parents just want to know what the right thing to do is. And in the current version of Super Proud, is it was designed to be very flexible. Like, I don't know what your kid needs. Like you have to tell me. and so there's sort of a middle road where I think we can advise families and we have advised families on what a behavior plan looks like for their kiddos. And we aren't

at least I I am not a licensed psychologist, so I I c I can't offer family counseling, but I can as you know a human development faculty member at the University of Denver listen to what you're talking about and think about what might make sense and and help guide you to a conclusion. So there's a middle road where you get the app for free, but you buy for some advice and some accountability, or you pay for some accountability.

and then there's the enterprise model where if we have group practices where where people say, hey, we really want a tool that we can just integrate into our practice, we're still figuring that out. We we still don't know what that model looks like. But I would say that there's a lot of value in getting more and more families on the platform and and I think that this will help clinicians to bring some accountability between visits. So I'd love to figure out how we can do a RevShare model there.

So primary user, parent-led, just pay for the app and you're on your way. Middle tier is pay for some advice and some accountability. And then the enterprise tier is how do we integrate in a larger practice and do a RevShare model.

Monisha Saldanha (34:03) Yeah, that sounds really well thought through.

Mathias Gran (34:06) Thank you.

Monisha Saldanha (34:08) What would have to become true for you to say now I can leave my job and build super proud full time?

Mathias Gran (34:17) Y this is a another really hard question for me because I had an an early adopter who who said, you know, w when are you gonna seek funding? When do you scale this thing? What does it look like? And my answer was like honestly, I just wanna I just want it to exist and offset my mortgage a little bit. You know, this doesn't ever have to become my full-time job. But since I've invested more emotional

financial and you know time, emotional energy, financial energy, and time into it, the more I've realized that what I love and some of my gifts, and and this also comes out in my adjunct teaching role at DU is that I am just addicted to seeing people grow. I'm addicted to seeing people take a chance, grow from that, and then I help them see their own growth. So for me, I think the the cut over time is

when we get enough people signing up for these advisory services that that I get to be a part of their family, family story and actually help them d develop a plan with their practitioners and with their kids to to really see them grow. I love coaching, whether it's lacrosse or volleyball or or or executives. I just love seeing

Monisha Saldanha (35:29) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (35:31) people grow and and that would be my dream job.

Monisha Saldanha (35:36) Fantastic. You're building super proud in Colorado while also working and teaching here. How has Colorado's technology and entrepreneurial community helped or not helped you move the company forward?

Mathias Gran (35:52) I think our community here is is really great. it doesn't feel cutthroat, it feels supportive. There's a a great tech legacy here. and and so I I know there are peers and and there there are resources here for for any any phase of the of the business that you're in. I would say where I feel like I have made an error in leveraging that community is that

I focused more on spending time with other CEOs and entrepreneurs and I love them. They're my community, but they aren't my audience. Right. So

Monisha Saldanha (36:29) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (36:29) what I should have been doing in building in building the community here is spending more time with mental health professionals and really understanding their day-to-day and finding finding how I can better serve their family. I wrote a post on LinkedIn about how I was like five users five links away from a thousand.

And how I wanted the next five hundred to all be mental health professionals because I'm just telling my story to CEOs and startup leaders and software engineers all over Denver, and those aren't the people that need my message. So it's like marketing one one. Just share

Monisha Saldanha (37:00) Mm.

Mathias Gran (37:02) your story with the people who need to hear your story, not the ones who are just your friends.

Monisha Saldanha (37:08) Looking back, what is the biggest mistake or assumption you've made building Super Proud? What would you do differently if you were starting again tomorrow?

Mathias Gran (37:22) There's so many mistakes. so man and so I don't like the biggest I don't like favorites questions. yeah.

Monisha Saldanha (37:27) it may be one mistake. A mistake. An interesting one

to share with the audience that will help them. Not make it.

Mathias Gran (37:33) Yeah. So I think I

the mistake that I make over and over again, so so you know, I have four or five LLCs in my name right now, according to the state of Colorado, and all of them are doing very little. And so the

Monisha Saldanha (37:48) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (37:49) biggest mistake that I make is and I think a lot of entrepreneurs make the same mistake, is that we come up with a great idea that we're passionate about, and then we don't go and test or prove it. And so if you really do have a great idea,

No matter which one it is, you have to nurture it, you have to invest in it, you have to put it out there, you have to meet people, you have to spend a lot of time, energy, and money in making it take off. And so I would say my biggest mistake, I mean, my daughter's now 10 and she had this problem when she was six. So it's taken me four years to really get my act together and decide that this is something that I want to invest in. So I would say, Don't do what I do, but do what I say.

Which is go

Monisha Saldanha (38:31) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (38:31) make sure you have a good idea before you invest in it. and then I would say, what's the least you have to do to go prove that it makes sense? And for me, I got a lot of really positive feedback very early on, but I needed to get that from my actual target audience, not just from people who like me and want to see me succeed. Because them saying this is a great idea isn't actually valuable. The people that need to say it's a great idea are the ones with the problem.

Monisha Saldanha (39:00) Yeah. Wise words.

Mathias Gran (39:03) Ha ha.

Monisha Saldanha (39:05) What is one book you recommend every builder read and why? Is it Dare to Lead?

Mathias Gran (39:12) Dirtelite is one of my faves. I actually like Brene Brown's audiobook better called it's the same as her breakout TEDx Power of Vulnerability, but the Sounds True crew from Boulder recorded her doing a week-long conference and all of her keynotes they assembled into a six hour audiobook. And she walks through what she calls the 10 guideposts to wholehearted living. And if you do not

feel totally torn apart and exposed as a human for

Monisha Saldanha (39:43) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (39:44) for at least three of these guideposts, then you're probably not alive. Because she

Monisha Saldanha (39:48) Yeah.

Mathias Gran (39:49) touches on, you know, numbing and substance abuse, perfectionism, you know, all of all she has ten of them, caring what people think, all attacking this this this fundamental theme that there's a pandemic or an epidemic about worthiness and self worth and how this is a fundamental thing that gets in the way of us being who we truly are. So that's what I teach and

For MBAs at DU is is how do we start to understand these parts of us? Because they're the reason that we will advance and and and fulfill our vision of ourselves or will will hold us in in a frozen state. So I would recommend the the six-hour audio book from Brene, The Power of Vulnerability

Monisha Saldanha (40:26) Mm-hmm.

Mathias Gran (40:28) on Sounds True. I think you can get it on Audible. I got mine from the public library on these things called CDs that used to exist. But yeah, but I've listened to it probably 20 times and

For me, I I hear something important every time I listen to it. So if you wanna recognize the the stories that you're carrying that get in the way of you really fully being here for others, you should check that out.

Monisha Saldanha (40:52) Yeah, definitely. I'll put that on my list. what's the name of the course that you teach?

Mathias Gran (40:58) I teach two courses at DU. I'm presently teaching the head and heart of leadership. So it's a it's about neuroscience and emotional intelligence. So how does our brain process information and turn it into stories? And how do those stories affect our ability to lead others? and then the other one is called leading and developing others. And this is a more hands-on practical skill building around the skills for executive leaders and just really

Human development in practice in an organizational setting. And that that's its own fascinating topic, but just really eye-opening. It gets touches on the same themes around how we're doing a second job all the time of pretending, managing perceptions, how that gets in the way of our relationships and our our decision making. So I love I love to be in this space. And I was telling

Monisha Saldanha (41:48) Mm.

Mathias Gran (41:48) I was telling someone at a an event that someone asked if I'm a psychologist, and I said,

I was supposed to be, I just didn't know till I was forty two, so here I am an MBA instead.

Monisha Saldanha (42:00) Well, fantastic. Mathias, thank you so much for your time today. This was a great conversation.

Mathias Gran (42:06) Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Manisha, and and thank you for supporting the startup community in Colorado.

Monisha Saldanha (42:11) it's my pleasure. what stands out from this conversation for me is how often innovation begins not with a grand technology vision, but with someone experiencing a problem personally and asking why the existing system isn't working better. Matthias's journey shows how something as simple as consistently noticing and celebrating a child's courageous choices can become the foundation for a product designed to help families build greater trust and connection.

It also reminds us that building a meaningful company alongside a career and family is far more complicated than the romantic idea of becoming your own boss. It requires choices around time, money, purpose, and what success actually means. Thank you for listening to Colorado Tech People and we'll see you next time.

Mathias Gran (42:57) Thank you everyone.