Built by Parents

During the summer this year, I was looking for a product that would make it easier to be on top of our children’s schedules before the tsunami of school, classes, sports, play dates, parties, and everything else started. With all the news around AI, it felt obvious that there would be a product available for this need. Unsurprisingly, I did find them, but nearly every one of them wanted access to my personal calendar and inbox.

Now working in tech for over 20 years, I know that providing access to my calendar and email would mean the end of my privacy like never before since my entire life from personal interactions, financial information, OTP, taxes, and more would now be up for grabs to create a highly targeted profile of me and my family.

So I imagined there should be a better way. I imagined that if I were very wealthy, I would have someone I could send things to, and they would just take care of them. There would be a clear boundary where they wouldn’t come into my personal space and know anything else about my personal life. So I decided to build an AI assistant for our family that would mimic this idea. And why not, having worked on much harder problems in the technology industry, I thought this could be a nice little side project before school started.

I imagined that if I were very wealthy, I would have someone I could send things to, and they would just take care of them. There would be a clear boundary.

The first version I built was hosted on my Mac. I had a lot of fun building this with my “design partner,” my wife. Then one Wednesday we got a notification about a camp that I had researched for my daughter. Registration closed on Friday and we should register now to make sure we secured a spot. Even though I knew what the technology could do, to me this was that first moment of delight and awe—to see the product experience come together and what it could do for busy parents like us. I decided this was worth building into a real product that my friends and extended family could use. And so Lana was born.

Since then Lana has been shaped by a series of feedback from all kinds of parents. Parents who want to see everything on their calendar to parents who just don’t like the clutter and want Lana to “just remember” and be on top of the everyday pick ups and drop offs. Parents who want to prep for the week ahead to those who want to be on top of their children's grades and homework.

Beyond privacy by design, in which Lana has access to only what you send her, Lana is built to be reliable. She does limited things today but I’ve obsessed about how she should do them to perfection. I’ve spent time on the little details, things we as busy parents care about such as a very simple way to schedule play dates or sport practice or pretty much any group activity with other families. And Lana works where most of our lives revolve: on WhatsApp.

I invite you to give Lana an opportunity to help you. If you care about privacy and yet have the desire to use technology to make your life easier, try Lana. You can start with as little as one or two emails and experience how she handles it. Curious what else she can do? Ask her on WhatsApp.